:h 


s>Kf;-,  \,xiv-  > ; 


LIBRARY 

UHtvBSsM 


«f 


QkUFg*^*^^ 


«l 


Ay 


^^a^yi 


KEW  YORK,   P.  J.  KF.Nf.lJ 


Lectures  and  Sermons 


DEUVERKD  BY  THK 


VERY  REV.  THOMAS  N.  BURKE,  O.P, 


SINCE  HIS  DEPARTURE  FROM  AMERICA. 


COMPILED    AND    EDITED,     WITH    INTRODUCTION, 


VERY  REV.  J.  A.  ROCHFORD,  O.P. 


w^ 


THIRD 


NEW  YORK: 

P.     J.     KENEDY, 

EXCELSIOR  CATHOLIC  PUBLISHINa  HOUSEj, 

6  Barclay  Steebt. 

1884. 


'fi"- 


■^ 


LOAN  SIAQC 


'^ 


*i. 


OOPTBTOHT, 

1878, 
Bt  Fxtxb  F.  Coubb. 


■i^: 


)  in 


S'  Carefully  considering  the  extraordinary  merit  of  all  the  ser- 
mons and  lectures  of  the  renowned  Father  Burke,  and  thoroughly 
convinced  of  their  immense  value  as  reading  matter  to  the  Ameri- 
can puUic,  whether  Catholic  or  not,  I  hereby  most  heartily  endorse 
the  efforts  of  my  predecessor.  Very  Rev.  J.  A.  Rochford,  to  give 
them  as  wide  a  circulation  as  possible.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  they 
will  have  a  place  in  every  Catholic  household  in  the  land  ;  and  that 
they  will  serve  to  purify,  ejilighten,  and  elevate  not  only  our  gene- 
ration but  also  generations  unborn. 

STEPHEN  BYENE,  Provincial  O.P, 
St.  ANTONonis  Vicasuis,  August  25,  1878. 


r'-   .#: 


CONTENTS. 


* 


FAQB 


Introduction", 7 

Panegyric  on  Pius  IX., 17 

The  Grandeur  of  Pope  Pius  IX., 36 

**  Follow  Thou  Mb,"         .......  60 

The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX., 70 

Eulogy  of  the  Late  Cardinal  Barnabo,       .        .        .  100 
The  Life  and  Character  of  St.  Dominic,     .        .        .111 

St.  Thomas  Aquinas, 121 

St.  Patrick, 131 

St.  Ignatius, 145 

St.  Francis  Xavier, 151 

St.  Vincent  de  Paul, 160 

St.  Catherine  of  Sienna, 169 

St.  Columbkille, 177 

The  Catholic  Church  in  America,         ....  199 
The  Catholic  Church  the  Safety,  not  the  Danger, 

of  the  Great  American  Republic,   ....  225 

The  Catholic  Church  and  Education,  ....  239 

The  Church  and  Civil  Government,     ....  251 

The  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age  we  Live  in,         .  267 

The  Catholic  Church  and  Science,       ....  288 

Ireland's  Catholicity,  and  what  Saved  It,         .        .  306 

6 


Contents. 


A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education,    . 
The  Music  of  the  Chukch, 

God  our  Father, 

The  Attributes  of  God,    .... 

The  Mystery  of  the  Incarnation, 

The  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus,    . 

The  Altar  of  the  Sacred  Heart,  . 

The  Virgin  Mother,         .... 

The  Feast  of  the  Immaculate  Conception, 

The  Stations  of  the  Cross, 

The  Passion  of  Our  Lord, 

The  Cross  the  Sign  of  Salvation, 

The  Beauty  of  Divine  Worship,     . 


PAGB 

316 
335 
350 
362 
376 
390 
398 
411 
421 
430 
444 
467 
475 


'"*    INTRODUCTION. 


TN  introducing  to  the  public  this  new  series  of  lectures  of 
the  Very  Rev.  Thomas  N.  Burke,  we  are  actuated  by 
an  abiding  hope  that  the  Catholic  truth  so  beautifully 
expounded  therein  will  find  attentive  readers  In  every 
Christian  family  of  America.  Our  country,  so  expansive 
in  all  commercial  and  political  affairs,  needs  sadly  the 
stable  teachings  of  our  holy  mother  the  Church  in  order  to 
perpetuate  the  blessings  of  equal  liberty. 

Ignorance  is  no  offspring  of  Catholic  faith.  Penal 
enactments,  it  is  true,  against  religion  and  education,  have 
produced  sad  results  among  the  children  of  Ireland  ;  but 
the  love  of  education,  fostered  by  the  Church,  burns  as 
warmly  in  the  Celtic  heart  to-day  as  it  did  in  the  days  of 
Erin's  glory.  Such  iniquitous  laws  do  not  exist  in  the 
United  States,  and  there  is  no  reason  why  the  children  of 
Irish  exiles  should  not  enjoy  all  the  blessings  of  education. 
Civil  and  religious  liberty,  and  education,  are  the  pet  theo- 
ries of  our  statesmen,  and  the  Church  not  only  does  not 
object  to  them,  but  has  nurtured  them  for  centuries. 

Torn  from  family  and  country  by  the  relentless  hand 
of  despotism,  Irishmen  have  found  a  generous  welcome  on 

the  shores  of  Columbia.     Nor  have  they  been  ungrateful. 

1 


8  Introductiok. 

They  have  settled  in  her  cities  and  villages,  and  have  per- 
formed no  ignoble  part  in  their  destinies.  With  their  axes 
they  have  entered  her  virgin  forests,  and  made  for  tlieir 
children  reputable  homes.  They  have  ploughed  her  fertile 
valleys,  and  the  God  of  abundance  blessed  them.  They 
have  dug  her  canals,  built  her  railroads,  and  forwarded  her 
productions  to  the  uttermost  limits  of  the  earth.  They 
have  spoken  with  ability  in  her  legislative  halls,  and  sac- 
rificed their  blood  with  intrepidity  in  her  defence.  Ingrat- 
itude, indeed,  is  not  their  characteristic  ;  for  they  nestle  as 
fondly  in  the  lap  of  their  adopted  mother  as  ever,  praying 
and  hoping  for  her  glorious  future.  They  have  given  their 
sweat  and  their  blood  ;  they  must  now  give  the  Faith. 

Prosperity  is  not  always  the  harbinger  of  durability; 
nor  is  commercial  activity  an  unfailing  sign  of  success. 
The  republics  of  ancient  times  flourished  under  the  influ- 
ences of  virtue  and  simplicity,  but  died  in  the  arms  of 
luxury  and  prosperity.  Virtue  is  the  important  element 
of  society,  without  which  governments  have  no  lasting 
foundations.    Hence  the  necessity  of  a  mrtuous  education. 

We  have  had  our  share  in  establishing  the  wealth  and 
prosperity  of  the  country  ;  why  should  we  not  now  wield 
an  influence  in  disseminating  the  truths  of  the  spouse  of 
Christ,  so  that  the  faith  which  has  lived  on  triumphantly 
amidst  the  vicissitudes  of  nineteen  centuries,  may  find  its 
way  into  the  hearts  of  all  our  fellow-citizens,  and  cement 
the  union  of  these  States  by  a  fellowship  of  Christian  edu- 
cation which  will  make  the  Republic  endure  for  ever  ? 

Indeed,  the  Irish  race  has  hitherto  borne  *'  the  burdens 


Introduction.  9 

and  the  heats  of  the  day,"  in  building  up  the  Churcli  in 
America.  It  has  not  only  planted  the  faith  of  Christ  in 
every  portion  of  Ameiica,  but  it  has  accomplished  it  un- 
der difficulties  that  would  have  daunted  any  other  people 
under  the  sun.  The  sons  and  daughters  of  this  race  have 
listened  with  sublime  patience  to  the  truths  of  the  Church, 
as  expounded  by  the  broken  English  of  zealous  missionary 
priestSj  and  have  not  loved  any  the  less  the  glorious  faith 
of  their  forefathers.  They  have  materially  assisted  the 
people  of  other  nationalities  in  building  their  churches  and 
chapels,  but  have  never  received  in  return  that  gratitude 
they  so  eminently  deserved.  The  history  of  their  sacrifices 
is  unwritten  on  earth,  although  their  love  for  religion,  for 
education,  and  their  adopted  country  is  universally  known. 

Why  may  they  not  now  bend  all  their  energies  to  ad- 
vance the  education  of  their  children  ?  Why  should  they 
not  be  aggressive  in  teaching  the  doctrines  of  the  Church 
and  the  glories  of  their  native  land  \  They  have  won  im- 
perishable renown  in  the  practice  of  moral  and  civic  vir- 
tues. They  will  hereafter  teach  the  faith  of  Christ  to 
their  non-Catholic  fellow-citizens,  and  thus  again  con- 
tribute to  the  glories  of  the  Republic. 

To  assist  this  worthy  enterprise,  we  have  taken  great 
pleasure  in  compiling  this  new  volume  of  lectures  by  the 
Very  Rev.  Thomas  N.  Burke.  The  people  are  clamorous 
for  them.  They  are  bread  to  those  who  hunger  for  truth. 
The  volume  consists  of  lectures  almost  exclusively  given 
since  the  departure  of  the  great  orator  from  America. 
They  form  a  reservoir  of  Catholic  thought  on  most  of  the 


10  Introduction. 

leading  questions  of  the  day,  and,  thongli  the  matchless 
declamation  which  accompanied  their  delivery  be  neces- 
sarily wanting,  they  still  are  wonderful  productions,  and 
must  bring  the  light  of  wisdom  to  many  minds  now  par- 
tially darkened  by  the  want  of  faith. 

A  glance  at  the  contents  wiU  show  this  volume  to  con- 
tain, probably,  the  most  interesting  course  of  lectures  ever 
given  in  the  English  language.  The  panegyrics  are  splen- 
did, though  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  stenographer,  in 
a  few  of  them,  did  not  give  a  more  copious  report.  Even 
these  are  worthy  of  the  orator.  To  study  them  is  to  ad- 
vance in  Christian  education.  To  meditate  on  them  is  to 
make  hearts  love  obedience,  chastity,  and  poverty.  To 
produce  these  virtues  is  to  establish  the  reign  of  Christ  in 
America,  and  to  nourish  the  roots  of  the  tree  of  liberty. 

The  controversial  discourses  are,  as  already  said,  on 
the  most  interesting  topics  of  the  day.  They  are  equally 
remarkable  for  simplicity  of  language  and  power  of  reason. 
They  are  particularly  adapted  to  benefit  the  sceptical,  and 
impart  faith  to  the  atheistic  scientist. 

The  didactic  discourses  are  exquisite  portrayals  of 
God's  love  for  man.  The  rich  will  find  in  them  reasons  to 
bless  the  Author  of  their  abundance,  and  will  be  charitable 
to  the  poor  ;  and  the  poor,  after  reading  them,  will  bless 
the  providence  of  God,  and  abide  with  hope  the  imperish- 
able riches  of  eternity.  Thus  the  conflict  between  capital 
and  labor  might  be  averted,  and  civil  society  would  find 
happiness  and  peace  in  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus. 

Before  concluding  this  introduction  we  wish  to  inform 


Intr  od  uction.  11 

the  pnblic  that  we  are  indebted  to  the  Freeman^  s  JouTTialy 
of  New  York,  for  the  copy  of  these  valuable  lectures.  Wo 
wish  also  to  publicly  thank  Mr.  Eliot  Ryder,  of  the  New 
York  Sun^  who  has  given  us  much  valuable  assistance  in 
this  compilation.  Nor  shall  we  forget  the  kindness  of  the 
very  reverend  author  of  these  lectures,  who  desired  that 
this  book  should  be  supervised  by  us.  In  a  letter  dated  the 
30th  of  June,  1878,  he  writes  :  *'  I  am  glad  it  [the  book] 
will  have  the  benefit  of  your  supervision,  and  I  hope 
my  American  brethren  will  derive  large  profits  from  it." 
He  also  stated  in  a  letter  2d  February,  1878  :  "When  I 
left  America  I  handed  over  to  our  Fathers  in  New  York  all 
my  interests  in  the  sale  of  my  lectures,  and  I  am  sorry 
that  the  (yrder  has  derived  little  or  no  pecuniary  benefit 
from  the  sale  of  them,  whilst  laymen  have  been  making 
large  sums  by  the  same."  The  same  letter  also  says  :  "If 
you  wish  to  give  the  countenance  of  your  honored  name  to 
Mr.  Collier  for  my  American  lectures  and  sermons  I  need 
not  tell  you  that  I  cannot  hinder  you,  nor  would  i  if  i 

COULD." 

These  statements  would  not  be  made,  but  that  it  has  been 
very  generally  understood  that  the  Dominicans  have  derived 
large  sums  of  money  from  the  sale  of  the  lectures  of  Father 
Burke.  This  opinion,  however,  is  so  much  at  variance 
with  the  truth,  that  we  deem  it  prudent  to  corroborate  the 
extract  from  the  above  letter,  and  say  that  the  pecuniary 
benefit  to  tlnQ  friars  of  Sixty-sixth  Street,  New  York,  arising 
from  the  sale  of  said  lectures,  is  infinitely  less  than  they 
had  a  right  in  justice  to  expect.    We  think  that/o^^r  hun- 


U  Introduction. 

dred  dollars,  not  in  cash  but  on  account,  will  more  than 
cover  the  receipts,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  a  commit- 
tee of  gentlemen  of  New  York  did  offer  twenty  thousand 
dollars  to  the  Fathers  for  the  right  of  publishing  the  same 
lectures.  The  public  need  not  think,  therefore,  that  we  are  in 
any  way  indebted  to  it  for  kindness  extended  to  the  former 
publisher  of  Father  Burke's  lectures  ;  though  we  do  thank 
the  public  most  cordially  for  its  appreciation  of  the  enter- 
prise and  integrity  of  Mr.  P.  F.  Collier,  who  has  been  ex- 
tremely generous  to  tis,  and  who  has  abundantly  estab- 
lished his  claims  to  be  the  publisher  of  this  volume. 

With  these  few  preliminary  remarks,  we  unhesitatingly 
commit  this  new  series  of  lectures  to  the  careful  reading  of 
our  fellow-countrymen,  confident  it  will  wield  a  salutary 
influence  in  the  promotion  of  faith,  liberty,  and  education. 

J.  A.   ROCHFORD,  O.P. 


St.  Dominic's  Chttrch, 
"Washdigton,  D.  C,  1878. 


f 


^- 


Panegyric  on  Pius  IX. 


Oh  Thursday,  February  7,  1878,  Pius  IX.  breathed  his  last,  and  went,  as  is 
fondly  believed,  to  the  realms  of  infinite  bliss,  where,  in  the  delights  of 
the  Beatific  Vision,  surrounded  by  the  angels  who  had  watched  over  his 
long  and  eventful  pontificate,  and  in  the  blessed  presence  of  the  Holy 
Mother  whom  he  delighted  to  honor,  he  enjoys  the  eternal  reward  of  his 
constant  and  abiding  love  for  the  Spouse  of  Christ.  The  whole  world 
mourned  the  loss  of  its  beloved  and  holy  father.  Nowhere  were  the 
services  of  the  Solemn  Office  and  High  Mass  of  Requiem  more  imposing 
and  impressive  than  in  the  pro-cathedral,  Marlborough  Street,  Dublin, 
where  on  Wednesday,  February  13,  Father  Burke  delivered  his  eloquent 
panegyric  and  fitly  eulogized  the  good  Pope,  whom  men  of  all  beliefs 
loved  and  honored.  A  fierce  storm  of  wind,  rain,  and  sleet  had  prevailed 
from  the  night  previous,  yet  the  sacred  edifice  was  not  large  enough  to 
contain  all  who  sought  admission,  hundreds  being  turned  away.  The 
cathedral  was  draped  in  the  deepest  mourning,  and  in  Ihe  centre  of 
the  nave  was  placed  a  catafalque  covered  with  black,  relieved  only  by 
the  papal  insignia,  and  by  silver  scrolls,  each  bearing  note  of  some  great 
event  in  the  life  of  the  dead  Pope.  A  hundred  wax-lights  surrounded 
the  catafalque,  and  branches  of  drooping  willow  ornamented  the  bier, 
which  was  guarded  by  veterans  of  the  Roman  army  in  the  uniform  of 
Pontifical  Zouaves,  to  which  corps  they  belonged. 

The  Cardinal-Archbishop  presided,  attended  by  the  Bishop  of  Ferns,  the  Co- 
adjutor-Bishop of  Kildare,  the  Bishop  of  Gadara,  and  about  three  hun- 
dred of  the  clergy. 

As  soon  as  the  Cardinal  had  taken  his  seat  the  Solemn  Office  of  the  Dead 
began,  and  was  recited  with  much  impressiveness  by  the  body  of  priests 
and  prelates.  The  three  psalms  and  lessons  of  the  first  Nocturn  and  the 
psalms  of  the  Lauds  were  said,  and  it  was  not  till  the  "  Benedictus  "  at  the 
Lauds  that  there  was  any  noticeable  singing.  The  singing  of  the  exquisite 
canticle  by  the  choir  of  priests  in  harmony  was  exceedingly  beautiful  and 
visibly  impressed  the  entire  congregation.  At  the  conclusion  of  the 
Office  High  Mass  was  celebrated,  the  Most  Rev.  Dr.  McCabe  being  cele- 
brant ;  Rev.  P.  O'Neill,  Adm.,  assistant  priest ;  Rev.  T.  O'Reilly,  deacon  ; 
Rev.  S.  Burke,  subdeacon  ;  and  Rev.  T.  Farrell  and  R'jv.  M.  Ryan 
being  masters  of  ceremonies.    The  Very  Rev.  Dr.  Woodlock  and  the 

17 


18  Panegyric  on  Pius  IX. 

Very  Rev.  Canon  Keogh  were  assistants  at  the  archiepisropal  throne. 
At  the  conclusion  of  the  Mass  Father  Burke  ascended  the  pulpit  and 
delivered  the  panegyric  of  the  deceased  Pontiff.    He  spoke  as  follows  : 

*'  TTE  was  beloved  of  God  and  men,  whose  memory  is  in 
•*■-■-  benediction.  He  made  him  like  unto  the  saints  in 
glory,  and  He  magnified  him  in  the  fear  of  his  enemies, 
and  He  sanctified  him  in  his  faith  and  meekness,  and  He 
chose  him  out  of  all  flesh,  and  He  gave  him  commandments 
before  his  face,  a  law  of  liie  and  instruction,  to  teach  Jacob 
His  covenant  and  Israel  His  judgments." 

These  words,  dearly  beloved,  are  taken  from  the  forty- 
fifth  of  Ecclesiasticus.  May  it  please  your  eminence, 
my  lords,  reverend  brothers,  and  dearly  beloved,  the  in- 
spired one  tells  us  that  it  is  better  to  go  into  the  house  of 
mourning  than  to  the  house  of  joy.  There  is  something 
peculiarly  holy  in  Christian  sorrow ;  and  you,  dearly  be- 
loved, who  so  often  enter  into  this  house  of  God,  generally 
find  it  a  house  of  joy.  To-day  it  is  a  house  of  mourning  ; 
to-day  the  Churcli  has  put  on  her  recent  widowhood  ;  to-day 
her  heart  is  made,  as  it  were,  desolate,  and  her  grieving 
tears  of  sorrow  are  upon  our  mother's  face  ;  for  the  great 
father,  the  great  guide,  the  great  visible  head  of  the 
Church  of  God  has  passed  from  his  militant  spouse  here 
to  his  appointed  place  among  the  triumphant  Church  in 
heaven.  And,  as  it  was  written  of  old,  all  earth  mourneth. 
It  is  not  like  any  other  sorrow  that  falls  upon  the  hearts 
of  men ;  it  is  not  a  mere  family  affliction  or  a  mere  na- 
tional sorrow ;  it  is  not  like  the  mourning  of  old,  when 
they  mourned  family  and  family  apart,  and  their  women 
apart ;  it  is  not  like  unto  the  mourning  of  the  Israelites 
when  for  thirty  days  they  wept  when  Aaron,  the  great 
priest,  was  taken  away  ;  it  is  not  like  the  sorrow  of  the 
Israelites  when  for  thirty  days  all  Israel  mourned  on  the 
plains  of  Moab  for  him,  the  great  one,  who  had  found  his 
mysterious  grave  on  the  mountain  summit ;  it  is  not  a  mere 
national  grief,  as  when  the  great  King  Josias  died  in  Jeru- 
salem, and  all  Judea  and  Jerusalem  mourned  for  him — it 
is  not  like  these,   because  they  were  but  partial  griefs. 


Panegyric  oy  Pius  IX.  1^ 

The  outer  world  knew  nothing  of  the  sorrows  of  the  Israel- 
ites as  they  wept  for  the  death  of  Aaron,  the  high-priest ; 
the  nations  around  rather  rejoiced  than  sympathized  in  the 
grief  of  the  Israelites  wlien  they  lamented  for  the  great 
lawgiver.  The  enemies  whom  he  had  met  at  Magdala  sent 
up  shouts  of  joy  while  Jerusalem  and  Judea  were  weeping 
over  the  great  king.  But  to-day  sorrow  has  overspread 
the  whole  earth  ;  a  note  of  grief  and  lamentation  comes 
forth  from  liundreds  of  millions  of  hearts.  Wherever  the 
sun  shines  there  is  found  the  Catholic  Church,  and  every- 
where it  is  afflicted.  There  exists  to-day  a  universal  sor- 
roWj  bounded  only  by  the  limits  that  circumscribe  the 
whole  world  in' which  we  live,'  ceasing  only  at  the  golden 
gates,  where  that  which  is  for  us  a  motive  of  such  deep 
sorrow  is,  we  believe  and  hope,  the  subject  of  a  mighty 
joy.  And  why  this  universal  sorrow  ?  Because  the  head 
of  the  Church  has  been  taken  away  from  us.  And  why 
this  deep  sorrow  %  Because  it  is  the  sorrow  of  children 
mourning  over  their  father — the  deepest  form,  perhaps, 
that  human  sorrow  can  take  ;  for  the  sorrow  of  a  son  weep- 
ing over  his  father  is  not  a  mere  passing  sentiment,  but  it 
is  a  sorrow  that  springs  out  of  the  very  depths  of  the 
mind,  out  of  the  hidden  and  innermost  chambers  of  the 
soul — a  sorrow  that  is  grafted  upon  the  memory,  recall- 
ing so  many  tender  traits  of  paternal  care  and  love  and 
kindness. 

Even  such  is  our  sorrow  to-day  as  we  stand  mute 
around  our  mother,  who  is  here  grieving  while  she  stands 
by  the  death-bed  of  Pius  IX.  In  truth,  my  dearly  beloved 
brethren,  the  occasion  requires  us  to  consider  the  position, 
the  office,  and  the  character  of  him  who  is  dead,  which 
brings  us  at  once  face  to  face  with  something  that  is  a 
great  mystery — namely,  the  Papacy,  the  Headship  of  the 
Catholic  Church.  Whether  we  consider  the  powers  the 
Pope  exercises,  their  extent,  their  greatness,  or  whether 
we  consider  the  extent  and  limits  of  his  jurisdiction,  I  con- 
sider his  position  is  a  most  awful  and  mysterious  one. 

What  are  the  powers  that  the  head  of  the  CathoHo 


so  Paneoybic  oif  Pius  IX.  >:. 

Church  exercises  ?  O  my  dearly  beloved !  if  we  would 
know  we  must  go  back  to  that  day  when  Christ  said  to 
Peter:  "All  power  in  heaven  and  on  this  earth  is  given 
me ;  and  even  as  the  Father  sent  me,  so  do  I  send  you." 
We  can  only  limit  his  powers  by  the  eternal  principles  of 
law,  justice,  and  sanctity,  as  they  are  in  the  mind  of  God ; 
and,  in  so  far  as  they  are  reflected  in  the  legislation  and  the 
action  of  man,  we  must  not  limit  the  powers  of  the  Christ, 
the  Omnipotent,  who  was  unlimited  in  His  power,  conferred , 
so  largely  and  so  mysteriously.  Every  ecclesiastical  law  vBi^ 
under  the  immediate  power  of  the  Pope  of  Rome.  There 
are  divine  institutions  in  this  Church  of  God  ;  the  episco- 
pacy is  a  divine  institution,  so  is  the  priesthood ;  but  no 
bishop  can  grasp  his  crosier  with  legitimate  jurisdiction,  no 
priest  can  preach  or  stand  upon  the  altar  lawfully,  unless 
from  Peter,  the  Pope  of  Rome,  and  from  the  Pope  comes 
that  blessing  of  communion  and  that  faculty  of  jurisdic- 
tion. Consider,  again,  the  extent  of  this  enormous  power. 
It  extends  wherever  the  Church  is  to  be  found  upon  earth ; 
it  is  to  be  found  active,  living,  and  in  the  full  exercise 
wherever  a  Catholic  priest  preaches,  wherever  a  Catholic 
listens  to  the  Word,  wherever  a  Catholic  altar  is  erected. 
Does  this  power  stop  here  ?  Oh  !  no.  Go  out  beyond  this 
earth;  pass  the  terrible  portals  of  death;  go  down  into 
the  place  of  expiatory  suffering — there  the  pontiff's  power 
is  still  in  the  full  exercise  of  its  mercy — there  the  hand 
of  the  pope  can  touch  the  suffering  souls,  lift  them  out  of 
their  place  of  expiation,  hasten  their  delivery,  anticipate 
their  joy,  and  send  them — I  was  about  to  say  before  their 
time— into  the  presence  of  their  God. 

And  now,  dearly  beloved,  if  you  ask  me  what  is  the 
source,  what  is  the  origin,  of  this  vast  power — so  great  in 
itself  that  we  almost  fail  to  realize  how  it  can  be  centred 
in  one  man;  so  great  in  extent,  that  the  whole  Chiistian 
turorld  should  submit  to  it,  should  accept  and  should  obey 
it  so  joyfully  ;  which  is  one  of  the  most  astounding  mira- 
cles of  God  in  this  world,  and  one  of  the  strongest  proofs 
that  the  Church  is  the  bride  and  spouse  of  God — if  you 


Panegyric  on  Pius  IX.  %i 

ask  me  the  origin  and  cause  of  all  this,  I  answer :  If  we 
wish  to  understand  what  the  visible  head  of  the  Church, 
the  Pope,  is,  what  he  must  be,  what  his  functions  and  his 
office  are,  we  must  go  back  to  consider  the  invisible  Head 
of  the  Church,  what  He  is  in  relation  to  His  Church,  what 
office  He  fulfils,  what  proofs  out  of  the  inlinite  treasury  of 
His  greatness  he  pours  out  of  His  love  for  her  as  her  Head. 
And  who  is  this  Head  1  He  wlio  from  all  eternity  was  the 
very  figure  of  that  Father' s  substance  and  the  splendor  of 
His  glory  ;  He  who  came  down  from  heaven,  incarnate  of 
the  Holy  Ghost  and  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  Mary,  but  still 
remaining  God,  true  God,  Infinite,  Omnipotent,  and  Holy, 
living  upon  earth — the  all-glorious  and  adorable  Jesus 
Christ.  He  is  the  Head  of  the  Church,  and  as  such  He  en- 
ters into  special  relations  with  her.  For  among  the  privi- 
leges, if  I  may  use  the  word,  conferred  upon  Him  by  the 
Incarnation  was  this :  that  as  man  He  became  the  Head 
of  the  Church.  We  know  that  as  man  He  inherited 
the  eternal  priesthood — that  He  was  a  priest  as  soon  as 
Mary  spoke  the  fiat  and  God  became  man  in  her  immacu- 
late bosom.  As  man  He  was  Head  of  the  Church  ;  and  it 
is  worthy  of  remark  how  often  and  liow  lovingly  the  apos- 
tle puts  Him  before  us  in  this  particular  office  as  Head  of 
the  Church.  To  the  Ephesians  He  says  the  Father  of 
Glory  hath  subjected  all  things  beneath  His  feet,  and  He 
has  made  Him  Head  over  all  the  Church.  To  the  Colos- 
sians  again  He  repeated  the  same  word.  And  now,  dearly 
beloved,  there  are  times  and  moments  when  the  Headship — 
really  abiding,  unfailing,  thougli  invisible — comes  out  more 
emphatically  and  distinctly  before  us,  and  especially  at 
such  a  moment  as  the  present,  when  the  Church  has  lost 
her  visible  head,  and  when  Christ  our  Lord  remains  still 
the  Head  of  the  Church,  so  that  this  living  body  is  not 
headless,  for  Christ  is  there.  And  what  are  these  attri- 
butes that  the  Yicar  of  Christ,  as  head  of  the  Church, 
brings  out  especially  ?  Principally  they  are  four.  As 
Head  of  the  Church,  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  is  the  infalli- 
ble Guide  of  the  Church's  teaching,  preserving  her  in  the 


22  Panegyric  on  Pius  IX, 

truth,  not  permitting  her  to  err  in  that  teaching  even  by  the 
slightest  admixture  of  one  iota  of  dogmatic  error.  "  You 
shall  know  the  truth,"  He  said  ;  "  I  am  the  truth,  and  I 
am  with  you  all  days,  even  to  the  consummation  of  the 
world." 

Dearly  beloved  brethren,  when  we  consider  that  the 
purpose  for  which  the  Son  of  God  instituted  this  Church 
was  that  man  should  be  instructed  in  the  truth — that  truth 
without  which  there  is  no  faith,  and  which  should  be 
known  to  all  men — it  follows  of  necessity  that  the  Church 
which  was  to  be  the  one  teacher  of  that  truth  must  be  in- 
fallible, incapable  of  error,  lest  men  might  believe  falsely 
concerning  Him  who  is  essential  truth  ;  there  is  the  first 
office  of  Christ  as  Head  of  His  Church.  The  second  office  of 
the  Lord  as  Head  of  the  Church  is  that  He  is  the  wise,  the 
prudent  Guide  of  His  Church  in  her  government  and  in  her 
administration.  One  of  the  popular  errors  of  our  day  is 
to  say  that  Christ  is  the  God  of  truth  indeed,  and  conse- 
quently that  His  Church  cannot  err,  but  that  from  time  to 
time  He  allows  this  Church  of  His  to  do  unwise  things,  to 
speak  the  truth  at  inopportune  moments,  to  bring  out 
some  dogma  or  great  truth  or  principle  and  give  it  a  pro- 
minence when  it  would  be  wiser  and  more  prudent,  if  not 
to  compromise  with  error,  at  least  for  a  while  to  hold  back 
the  stern,  prominent  announcing  of  that  which  is  true. 
But  those  who  thus  think  or  speak  seem  to  forget  that 
Christ  our  Lord  not  only  as  the  God  of  truth  keeps  His 
Church  in  eternal  truth  in  her  teaching,  but  that  also  as  a 
God  of  infinite  wisdom  He  guides  His  Church  in  the  ways 
of  wisdom  in  her  administration  and  in  her  government. 
Do  we  not  find  Jesus  Christ  instructing  His  apostles,  and 
saying  to  them  :  "  H  they  persecute  you  in  this  city,  fly  to 
another  "  ;  and  again :  "Whilst  you  are  prudent  as  the  ser- 
pent, you  must  still  be  simple  as  the  dove"  ;  and  elsewhere 
laying  down  rules  for  their  management  and  government  ? 
"When  you  are  brought  before  kings  and  juinces,"  He 
says,  "do  not  think  or  meditate  upon  what  things  you 
shall  say,  for  in  that  hour  it  will  be  given  you  what  to 


■Panegyric  on  Pius  IX.  23 

say ;  for  it  is  not  you  wlio  speak,  but  the  Spirit  of  the 
Fatlier  that  speaketh  in  you."  And,  dearly  beloved,  the 
third  office  of  the  Saviour  as  Head  of  the  Church  is  that 
He  is  the  invincible  defender  and  champion  of  His  Church, 
and  His  omnipotent  arm  is  for  her  like  to  a  sliield.  "  His 
truth  and  power  shall  surround  you  as  a  shield,"  exclaims 
the  Psalmist ;  "  thou  shalt  not  be  afraid  of  the  things  of 
the  night."  Terrible  things  of  the  night,  terrible  storms 
of  persecution,  terrible  essays  of  all  that  thig  earth  has  of 
power,  and  all  that  hell  has  of  malice — O  my  brethren ! 
these  terrible  onslaughts  may  arise  ;  there  may  be  thick 
clouds  over  the  sky,  and  the  storm  may  lash  the  sea  into 
fury  ;  the  angry  waves  may  appear  to  cover  the  land  ;  but 
He  who  is  omnipotent  is  there,  and  it  is  the  destiny,  the  fate 
of  the  Church  to  outlive  all  persecution,  for  the  strength  of 
God  is  her  defence. 

'  The  fourth  office  the  Son  of  God  fulfils  towards  His 
Church  is  that  of  the  true-hearted  and  faithful  lover ;  for,  as 
the  apostle  says,  God  loved  His  Church.  And  what  proof 
did  He  give  of  His  love  for  her  %  He  never  denied  her  the  aid 
of  His  teaching  and  the  guidance  of  His  wisdom ;  He  never 
held  back  any  grace,  any  favor.  He  lived  for  her  and  He 
died  for  her.  He  gave  Himself  up  for  His  Church.  Behold, 
then,  the  four  great  relations  of  the  invisible  Head  of  the 
Church :  the  infallible  guide  in  doctrine,  infallible  wisdom 
in  government,  omnipotence  and  power  in  defence,  and 
love  stronger  even  than  death. 

But,  dearly  beloved,  if  this  be  the  invisible  Head  of  the 
Church,  then  these  four  attributes  must  belong  to  him  who 
represents  Christ,  who  is  the  visible  head  of  the  Church  ; 
for  this  Church  was  founded  among  men  for  men.  It  was 
to  appeal  to  the  senses  of  men  that  the  splendor  of  her 
ceremonial  was  established,  every  sense  helped  on  by  ex- 
ternal action,  external  ritual ;  and  therefore  it  was  neces- 
sary that  the  invisible  Head  should  be  represented,  and 
that  Christ,  who  is  the  abiding,  invisible  Head  of  the 
Church,  should  have  His  vicar  and  viceroy  governing  her 
before  the  eyes  of  men.     And  He  called  St.  Peter,  as  we 


24  Panegyric  on  Pius  IX. 

know,  among  His  apostles,  and  He  conferred  on  him  and 
upon  his  successor  the  sacred  office  of  that  headship  in  His 
Church,  and  all  the  powers  that  were  necessary  for  it.  Ail 
the  faculties  without  which  it  could  not  adequately  exist, 
all  the  honor  that  belonged — all  these  were  conferred 
upon  Peter  in  the  day  when  Christ,  having  put  him  to  the 
test,  said  to  him :  To  thee,  beyond  all  others,  in  its  fullest 
and  most  special  sense,  do  I  give  the  keys  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven.  "Feed  my  lambs,  feed  my  sheep."  Nay, 
more,  for  what  I  am  to  the  Church  thou  shalt  be  as  my 
vicar  and  viceroy.  Fear  not  for  that  faith.  I  have  prayed 
for  thee  and  will  live  in  thee.  A  thousand  may  fall  at  thy 
left  hand  and  ten  thousand  at  thy  right  hand,  but  thou 
shalt  not  waver,  much  less  perish,  and  thou  shalt  confirm 
thy  wavering  brethren. 

The  tradition  of  Peter's  powers,  of  Peter's  office,  and 
of  Peter' s  graces  has  jjassed  on  from  pope  to  pope  for 
nearly  two  thousand  years.  The  hands  that  received  this 
great  depository  were,  some  more,  some  less,  worthy  of  it ; 
but  the  deposit  itself  was  never  violated.  Never  did  pope 
epeak  to  his  Church,  in  virtue  of  his  office,  one  word  of 
falsehood ;  never  did  pope  refuse  to  defend  the  Church 
committed  to  him  ;  never  did  pope  neglect  the  administra- 
tion and  government  of  that  Church  ;  and  let  us  hope  never 
was  pope  found  wanting  in  his  love  for  the  Church.  But  al- 
though that  long  and  magnificent  list  brings  before  us  the 
names  of  ome  of  the  greatest  saints  that  God  ever  gave  to  His 
Church — brings  before  us  historic  names,  whom  the  world 
has  even  canonized  with  its  own  evanescent  canonization  of 
fame ;  even  though  the  roll  recalls  a  Gregory  the  Great 
and  a  Gregory  perhaps  still  greater,  an  immortal  Hil de- 
brand  ;  Boniface  YHI.,  so  magnificent  in  his  triumph  ;  Pius 
v.,  so  terrible  in  his  prayer,  who  commanded  the  elements 
on  that  dreadful  day  at  Lepanto — yet,  with  all  these,  never, 
perhaps,  in  the  annals  of  this  Papacy  has  a  name  been 
written  in  brighter  characters,  both  as  a  man  and  as  Yicar 
of  Christ,  than  the  name  that  is  inscribed  on  the  catafalque 
in  St.  Peter's  to-day — the  name  of  Pius  IX.    Speaking  of 


Panegyric  on  Pius  IX.  25 

the  Blessed  Virgin,  St.  Bernadine  of  Sienna  tells  us  that 
wheneyer  Almighty  Grod  raises  any  being  to  any  particular 
office  or  dignity  in  His  Church,  and  imposes  upon  him  any 
specific  responsibilities,  in  His  mercy  He  always  gives  graces 
in  proportion  to  the  work  which  is  to  be  done.  And,  truly, 
when  we  look  upon  the  days  of  our  century,  and  recollect 
what  is  now  history  in  the  life  of  Pius  IX.  from  his  ear- 
liest day,  we  find  a  man  to  whom  Almighty  God  had  given 
graces  to  enable  him  to  bear  the  mighty  burden  of  the  re- 
sponsibilities and  glories  of  the  Papacy.  He  was  born  in 
1792,  and  the  nobility  of  his  birth  is  but  the  least  of  the 
greatness  and  the  beauties  of  his  exalted  life.  He  grew  up 
from  childhood  into  youth  surrounded  and  protected  by 
the  blessing  of  sweetness  ;  so  tliat,  when  he  presented  him- 
self in  1818  to  be  ordained  a  priest,  he  was  found  worthy 
of  the  priesthood,  because  he  brought  into  the  sanctuary 
of  God  a  virgin  heart  unsullied  for  service,  and  virgin 
hands  for  consecration.  He  was  distinguished  in  the 
schools  as  a  theologian  and  canonist ;  but  be  was  far  more 
remarkable  and  distinguished  for  the  tenderness  of  his 
piety,  for  the  wonderful  spirit  of  prayer  which  has  been 
the  secret,  the  soul  of  all  his  greatness,  and  for  the  gentle- 
ness and  compassionate  feelings  of  his  heart.  Of  this  he 
gave  a  proof  immediately  when  he  was  ordained  priest. 
His  learning,  the  circumstances  of  his  birth,  liis  surround- 
ings— all  might  have  prompted  in  his  young  mind  a  career 
of  office,  of  dignity,  of  nobility.  What  was  the  first  act 
of  Pius  IX J  Upon  being  made  priest  he  went  into  an  ob- 
scure street  in  Rome  ;  he  found  there  a  large  orphanage, 
but  recently  founded ;  he  entered  there,  selected  a  little 
room  for  himself,  and  for  seven  years  remained  teaching 
the  orphans,  providing  for  them,  seeing  to  all  their  wants, 
and  happy  as  their  father.  Behold  how  the  career  of  this 
great  priest  began,  and  from  what  humble  beginnings  came 
such  an  uprising  of  glory.  Wlio  would  have  imagined 
that  a  heart  that  was  satisfied  with  an  orphan' s  love  was 
destined  one  day  to  be  dilated  and  to  take  in  the  love  of 
the  whole  Christian  Church  %    Who  would  imagine  that 


26  Paneotbic  on  Pius  IX. 

the  mind,  cultured,  highly  trained  as  it  was,  yet  so  nnam- 
bitious  as  to  be  willing  to  expend  itself  on  the  government 
of  a  small  institute  of  orphans,  was  destined  one  day  to  be 
what  the  mind  of  Pius  IX.  has  been  for  the  last  thirty-two 
years — the  light  of  the  world,  the  consolation,  the  strength, 
and  the  glory  of  the  universal  Church  of  God  'i 

But  he  wa,s  not  destined  to  remain  in  the  quiet  and 
prayerful  calm  of  his  orphanage.  Troublesome  times  were 
coming  ;  the  nations  were  fermenting  and  disturbing  them- 
selves; the  spirit  of  irreligion  was  beginning  to  appear 
abroad,  and  the  Sovereign  Pontiff  of  the  day  found  it  ne- 
cessary to  send  a  mission  involving  labor  and  danger  far 
away  to  the  state  of  Chili,  in  South  Ameiica.  The  moment 
the  office  of  danger  and  labor,  the  thankless  office  that  in- 
volved residence  in  an  unhealthy  climate,  banishment 
from  home  and  friends,  exile  from  his  dear  Italy  that  he 
loved  so  well,  cutting  off  any  prospect  (if  he  entertained 
any)  of  promotion  or  dignity — the  moment  this  difficulty 
offered  and  he  was  called  upon  he  joyfully  rose  up,  left 
his  humble  home,  and  went  out  upon  that  mission  that  was 
so  heavy  and  dangerous,  and  actually  before  he  reached  the 
scene  of  his  labors  he  was  obliged,  for  the  Church  of  God, 
to  undergo  imprisonment.  Returning  after  two  years,  he 
was  made  Archbishop  of  Spoleto.  Tiie  moment  he  reached 
the  archie piscopal  see  what  was  the  first  thing  that  Pius 
IX.  did  ?  There,  close  to  his  archiepiscopal  palace,  so  that 
they  might  be  under  his  eyes  and  hands,  his  first  care  was 
to  build  an  orphanage.  Five  years  later,  translated  to 
Imola,  his  first  care  again  was  to  build  two  orphanages 
and  to  erect  what  was  then  almost  unknown  in  Italy — re- 
fuges for  fallen  sinners.  Thus,  dearly  beloved,  the  works 
of  mercy  multiplied  under  his  hands,  according  as  his  fa- 
cilities for  being  merciful  increased.  Arriving  in  Rome, 
he  who  was  anxious  to  hide  himself  from  all  men,  he  who 
among  the  sons  of  Jesse  seemed  to  be  a  very  David,  the 
least,  the  youngest  of  all — over  him  rested  the  Spirit  of 
God  and  pointed  him  out;  and  then  began  the  pontificate 
of  Pius  IX.     That  pontificate  has  closed  to-day.   A  double 


Panegyric  on  Pius  IX.  37 

record  remains  of  it — the  record  that  this  world  has  taken 
of  him  and  that  the  Church  militant  has  preserved  ;  a  re- 
cord that  may  be  read  by  future  generations  and  called  a 
history  ;  the  record  which,  in  the  case  of  so  many  pontiffs 
who  have  gone  before  him,  has  been  a  strange  and  unequal 
mixture  of  a  grain  of  truth  and  a  bushel  of  calumnies — 
that  history  which  loves  to  calumniate  and  find  fault  with 
them  because  they  are  popes. 

But  there  is  another  record  for  that  pontificate  which 
has  gone  forth,  and  it  is  that  which  the  hand  of  the  dying 
Pontiff  brought  with  him  to  his  judgment,  and  which  he 
submitted  to  the  all-seeing  eye  of  Jesus  Christ,  to  stand  or 
fall  by  the  issue  of  it,  to  make  it  either  his  passport  to 
heaven  or  to  make  it  the  condemnation  of  his  own  unwor- 
thiness.  Which  of  these  two  records  shall  we  take  to-day 
in  commemorating  his  ftontificate  ?  I  love  the  one  which 
the  Pope  took  to  God — I  love  it.  It  was  my  privilege  to 
know  something  personally  of  him,  for  twelve  years  to 
live  almost  under  the  light  of  his  presence,  to  behold  him 
in  the  moment  of  supreme  trial  as  well  as  in  moments  of 
supreme  glory ;  to  behold  him  when,  kneeling  before  the 
altar  of  God,  in  the  presence  of  Jesus  Christ,  he  instantly, 
and  apparently  without  any  effort,  fell  into  that  wonder- 
ful abstraction  of  prayer,  so  that  the  very  sight  of  him  at 
prayer  was  a  most  vivid  memento  of  him.  Whilst  I  love 
the  one  I  am  not  afraid  of  the  other  ;  the  world  has  spoken 
as  well  as  the  Church  of  this  man  ;  the  world  has  passed 
its  judgment  on  him,  and  forth  from  the  bitterest  of  his 
enemies  has  come  the  unwilling  testimony  of  the  virtues 
and  greatness  of  Pius  IX.  Not  a  voice  is  heard  in  dissent, 
not  a  vice  or  a  fault  of  the  long  catalogue  of  human  weak- 
nesses and  errors  have  they  been  able  to  take  and  fix  upon 
his  escutcheon  ;  not  a  single  day  or  act  of  that  long  and 
wonderful  pontificate  are  they  able  to  bring  up  as  a  re- 
proach upon  his  memory.  Yes,  it  is  the  special  and  pecu- 
liar glory  of  this  man  that  after  his  pontificate,  wonderful 
in  its  greatness  and  glory,  even  the  world  has  canonized  him 
by  the  voice  of  human  praise.     For,  in  truth,  he  fulfilled 


28  Panegyric  on  Pius  IX. 

in  a  remarkable  manner  the  four  great  oflSces  and  duties 
which  belonged  to  him  as  the  viceroy  of  the  invisible  Head. 
He  was  guide  of  the  Church's  doctrine,  fearless  in  the  as- 
sertion of  the  truth,  clear  and  emphatic  in  the  definition  of 
her  divine  faith.  His  position  was  as  head  of  the  Church. 
It  is  well  known  it  was  the  understanding  and  the  mind  of 
the  Church  since  the  day  that  the  Council  of  Jerusalem 
heard  Peter  and  acquiesced  in  his  decisions,  since  the  day 
that  the  Fathers  of  Ephesus  cried  out,  "  Peter  has  spoken  ; 
the  cause  is  finished  ;  Christ  has  spoken  in  Peter,"  that 
the  action  of  the  Church  was  ever  governed  by  the  great 
principle  that  her  visible  head  was  her  infallible  guide ; 
that  the  only  infallible  witness  to  the  Church's  truth,  the 
only  infallible  guardian  of  the  deposit  of  her  faith,  was  the 
Pope  of  Rome,  who  cannot  err  when  he  imposes  his  word 
upon  the  Church  ex  catJtedrd  as  her  visible  head  on 
earth. 

But,  dearly  beloved,  although  this  great  truth  was  rec- 
ognized, laid  down  by  every  theologian,  enunciated  by 
every  father,  and  acted  upon  in  every  age  by  the  Church, 
yet  the  moment  had  not  come  when  it  was  necessary  to 
meet  not  only  the  dangers  of  the  present  but  the  wants  of 
every  future  age,  that  the  Church  of  God  should  speak 
out  her  mind,  that  she  should  give  dogmatic  testimony, 
that  she  should  crystallize  tlie  truth  and  embody  it  in  a 
formal  diction  of  faith.  This  glory  was  reserved  for  Pius 
IX.  One  of  the  last  acts  of  his  pontificate,  one  of  the  most 
glorious,  was  on  that  day  in  July,  1870,  when  he  rose  up 
in  St.  Peter's,  in  Rome,  with  the  whole  teaching  Church  of 
God  there  around  him,  and  the  whole  Church  that  was 
taught  waiting,  as  the  people  were  awaiting  the  decisions 
of  Ephesus.  Forth  from  that  voice  which  was  heard  from 
end  to  end  of  the  earth— forth  from  that  voice  there  came, 
re-echoing  and  explaining  the  mind  that  was  burdened 
with  the  very  accents  of  the  God  of  eternal  truth,  forth 
amid  the  acclamation  and  the  joy  of  the  Church  of  God 
came  the  definition  of  Peter's  infallibility  and  of  Peter's 
successors,  so  that  wherever  the  successor  of  Pius  IX.  may 


Panegyric  on  Pius  IX.  29 

be,  wherever  the  wave  of  persecution  may  bear  him,  no 
matter  how  wild  the  shore,  how  far  away  the  land,  even 
if  God  destines  for  him  exile,  he  will  bear  away  with  him 
that  sign  of  God's  protection. 

He  was,  moreover,  the  wise  governor  of  the  Church  of 
God.  The  government  and  administration  of  the  Church 
of  God,  dearly  beloved,  is  a  very  wonderful  thing.  It 
branches  out  into  a  thousand  ramifications  ;  it  goes  out 
and  makes  itself  felt  in  the  administration  of  every  sacra- 
ment ;  it  is  brought  home  to  every  individual,  to  every 
house,  to  every  parish  ;  it  ramifies  all  over  the  earth  ;  but 
as  a  fruitful  vine  which,  no  matter  how  it  extends  itself 
here  and  there,  still  is  derived  from  one  root,  from  which 
it  takes  all  its  sap  and  richness,  so  the  whole  Church  of 
God,  even  though  it  is  extended,  as  I  have  said,  yet  gathers 
itself  together  and  becomes  one  in  the  Pope  of  Rome,  the 
head  and  centre  of  the  Catholic  Church.  What  wisdom, 
then,  must  be  his  whose  words  all  men  wait  to  hear, 
that  they  may  be  guided  thereby  !  What  knowledge  and 
wisdom  must  he  have  who  has  to  interpret  the  traditions 
of  ages  of  learning  and  experience !  What  a  vigilant  eye 
must  he  have  who  is  expected  to  see  wherever  the  Church 
is  from  end  to  end  of  the  earth  !  That  wisdom,  that  vigi- 
lance, that  laborious  care  was  the  life  of  the  glorious  Pon- 
tiff Pius  IX.  Behold  the  efforts  of  his  wise  administra- 
tion in  the  midst  of  his  own  sorrows.  In  1850,  naving  just 
returned  from  exile,  he  does  not  forget  to  re-establish  the 
hierarchy  so  long  abolished  and  extinguished  in  England. 
Behold  the  Church  of  N'orth  America,  with  its  dioceses 
amounting  almost  to  one  hundred,  a  glorious  and  flourish- 
ing Church.  To  whom,  under  God,  does  it  owe  all  its 
glorious  progress  %  Whose  breath  is  it  that  gave  life  to 
that  young  giant  Church  that  has  risen  np  in  rhe  West  ? 
It  was  the  care  of  him  who  established  its  parishes  and 
bishoprics,  and  crowned  that  Church  by  giving  it  a  prince- 
cardinal.  His  care  went  beyond,  even  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth.  Far  away  in  the  Australian  antipodes  churches 
have  sprung  up  and  are  flourishing.     The  cross  of  Christ 


30  Paneqtrio  o^r  Pius  IX. 

\s  everywhere  raised  in  glory.  Uuder  God  all  this  is  due 
to  the  fertilizing  intluence  and  the  energizing  hand  of  Pius 
IX.  The  history  of  his  government  of  the  Church  of  God 
will  be  one  of  the  brightest  pages  in  that  Church's  history, 
both  for  an  unceasing,  ever-vigilant  care  and  for  the  pro- 
found wisdom  and  prudent  courage  with  which  he  held 
the  helm  of  the  bark  of  Peter  and  guided  it  in  such  dark 
and  fearful  storms. 

He  also  fulfilled  the  other  duty  which  he  derived  as 
Pope  from  the  invisible  Head.  His  was  the  dauntless 
heart,  the  strong  voice,  the  fearless,  powerful  arm  that  de- 
fended the  Church  since  the  day  he  was  elected  to  be  Pon- 
tiff before  all  men.  Oh  !  how  brave  was  that  heart  of  the 
Sovereign  Pontiff.  When  all  were  afraid  he  alone  was 
fearless  ;  when  the  air  was  thick  with  danger,  revolution, 
and  blood,  he  alone,  like  to  his  Divine  Master  when  He 
rose  from  His  sleep  in  the  storm-tossed  boat — he  alone  was 
calm  ;  his  faith  never  wavered,  his  voice  never  faltered 
when  he  uttered  the  words,  "  O  ye  of  little  faith  !  why 
are  ye  afraid?"  When  was  that  voice  ever  silent  when 
the  interests  of  the  Church  were  imperilled  ?  Every  form 
of  injustice  rose  up  around  him.  He  grappled  with  them 
alL  The  principal  of  the  Catholic  powers  of  Euroi)e  pressed 
upon  him  to  come  to  some  compromise  with  the  loose  prin- 
ciples and  the  dangerous  maxims  that  are  afloat  in  the 
present  day.  Ay,  would  he  only  extend  his  hand  to  in- 
justice because  it  was  in  its  mildest  form  of  error,  because 
it  had  put  on  its  most  plausible  shape  ?  The  answer  that 
came  from  the  heart  and  the  lips  of  the  Pontiff  was  the  im- 
mortal Nowpossumus^  which  were,  perhaps,  the  grandest 
words  that  were  ever  uttered — "  We  cannot  do  it,"  as  the 
apostles  answered  when  they  were  told  to  cease  preaching, 
and  mention  no  more  the  name  of  the  Nazarene  ;  they  an- 
swered, *'  We  cannot  do  it ;  there  is  a  power  greater  than 
man."  Behold  him  almost  upon  his  deatli-b^d,  as  he 
turned  those  dying  but  fearless  eyes  of  his  and  spoke  with 
that  unfaltering  voice,  witli  the  hand  of  death  already  upon 
him,  the  crown  of  the  temporal  empire  fallen  from  his 


Panegyric  on  Pius  IX.  31 

brow,  but  the  other  crown  remaining  of  wliich  it  is  writ- 
ten :  "Thou  shalt  be  a  crown  of  glory  in  the  hands  of  the 
Lord  and  the  diadem  of  the  kingdom  of  God."  But  his 
temporal  crown  was  gone,  the  sce]3tre  stricken  from  his 
hand.  And  before  him  stood  a  mighty  figure,  an  emperor 
at  the  head  of  countless  legions  Hushed  with  glory ;  a 
man  before  whose  nod  all  Europe  was  standing  trembling  ; 
a  man  in  whose  eye  all  the  nations  could  read  their  own 
destinies  ;  a  man  who  held,  as  he  holds,  peace  or  war,  de- 
struction or  life,  to  thousands  in  the  palm  of  his  hand  ;  a 
man  no  one  dared  to  confront.  One  man  alone  rebukes 
him,  convicts  him  of  his  treachery,  and  puts  his  falsehood 
before  the  whole  world,  and  that  man  is  the  dying  Pius  IX. 

He  not  only  governed  the  Church  of  God,  taught  the 
Church  of  God,  but  he  fought  for  the  Church  of  God,  and 
his  name  will  go  down  not  merely  with  the  tiara  of  juris- 
diction, ay,  but  with  the  higher  crown  of  a  life-long  mar- 
tyrdom on  his  brows. 

He  loved  the  Church  with  all  the  ardor  of  his  great, 
tender,  virgin  heart ;  he  loved  the  Church  and  the  splen- 
dor of  her  glory.  He  might  well  say  with  David,  "I 
have  loved,  O  Lord  !  the  beauty  of  Thy  house,  and  the 
place  where  Thy  glory  dwelleth."  How  well  he  showed 
this  love  for  the  Church  of  God  in  the  assiduous  labors  of 
so  long  a  pontificate,  in  the  delight  and  joy  of  his  heart 
when  he  saw  cardinals  and  bishops  of  the  Church  of  God 
and  the  faithful  children  of  the  Church  gathered  around 
him  !  Of  Jesse,  the  high-priest  of  old,  it  is  written  in  his 
praise,  and  as  the  sign  of  his  sanctity  and  love  for  the 
Church,  that  he  deliglited  t-o  see  around  him  all  the  sons 
of  Aaron  ;  and  so  with  Pius  IX.  Now  to  canonize  a 
saint ;  again  to  celebrate  the  eighteenth  centenary  of  the 
great  first  pope  ;  again  to  take  counsel  for  tlie  affairs  of 
the  Church,  Pius  IX.  loved  to  call  his  brothers  around  him, 
loved  to  see  them  around  him,  he  towering  above  on  his 
throne,  as  the  cedar  planted  by  the  side  of  running  waters. 
Oh  !  how  he  loved  the  Church  of  God.  He  gave  a  great 
and  wise  and  deep  proof  of  that  love.     He  knew  that 


32  Panegyric  on  Pjus  IX. 

Mary,  the  Mother  of  Jesus  Christ,  was  the  most  powerful 
of  all  God' s  creatures  ;  he  knew  that  her  voice  resounded, 
not  without  a  tone  of  maternal  command,  where  every 
other  voice  was  but  the  humble  whisper  of  a  suppliant.  He 
knew  that  she  had  claims  such  as  no  other  creature  could 
have  upon  God,  and  because  he  loved  the  Church  he  pro- 
claimed Mary' s  glories,  and  he  placed  the  whole  Church  of 
God  under  her  peculiar  protection  in  the  mystery  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception. 

How  he  loved  the  Church  !  One  of  his  devotions,  flow- 
ing out  of  the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation,  yet  required  to 
be  developed.  To  bring  that  mystery  in  all  its  fulness,  in 
all  its  greatness,  in  all  the  height  of  its  mystic  feeling,  he 
brought  all  the  abundance  of  its  graces  home  to  every  heart 
in  the  devotion  to  the  Sacred  Heart.  Out  of  that  wonder- 
ful Incarnation  flowed  four  great  lights,  two  of  them  ap- 
pertaining to  Jesus  Christ  Himself — one  the  tnith  of  His 
divinity,  the  second  the  truth  of  His  humanity,  which 
was  assumed  into  the  Godhead.  The  other  two  great  lights 
that  came  forth  from  the  Incarnation  are  the  position  of 
Mary  His  Mother  and  the  position  of  Peter  His  vicar,  both 
relating  to  Him  in  virtue  of  that  humanity.  The  Church 
of  God  took  thought  for  the  defence  of  His  divinity  in  the 
Council  of  Nice  ;  the  Churcli  of  God  defended  His  huma- 
nity in  the  fifth  General  Council.  Mary's  position  in 
relation  to  Him  as  Mother  was  defended  at  Epliesus,  and 
there  only  remained  the  great  dogmatic  language  of  the 
Church  of  God  which  declared  Mary  fit  to  be  Queen  of 
the  Church.  This  was  the  definition  of  the  Immaculate 
Conception  which  was  declared  by  Pius  IX. 

The  fourth  light  that  streams  forth  from  the  Incarna- 
tion is  the  perpetuity  of  that  headship  visible  before  men 
in  the  throne  of  St.  Peter,  and  the  glory  of  this  definition 
was  reserved  for  Pius  IX.  Oh  !  how  he  loved  the  Ciiurch. 
His  heart  was  weighted  with  age ;  many  a  winter  and 
stormy  year  had  passed  over  his  venerable  head ;  his 
heart,  so  loving,  was  bruised  and  broken  by  ten  thousand 
acts  of  ingratitude  ;  his  strong,  natural  sense  of  jight  was 


Panegyric  on  Pius  IX.  33 

outraged  by  ten  thousand  forms  of  national  as  well  as  in- 
dividual treason  and  falsehood.  What  sustained  him  % 
What  made  him  pass  beyond  the  mystic  years  of  Peter,  the 
first  pope  that  ever  crossed  the  sacred  boundary  \  What 
sustained  him  during  the  seven  years  of  his  enforced  im- 
prisonment at  the  Vatican?  What  upheld  him  amid  so 
many  treasons  %  The  same  principle  that  enabled  the  Son 
of  God  to  outlive  the  hours  of  agony  on  the  cross — the 
same  principle  that  enabled  Mary  to  stand  and,  vs^ithout 
dying,  to  witness  the  awful  agony  of  her  Son.  Every 
other  passion,  every  other  inllaence,  every  other  power 
fades  away  before  death.  At  the  sight  of  death  the 
ambitious  abandons  the  designs  of  his  soul  for  ever. 
At  the  sight  of  death  the  successful  man  forgets 
his  honors.  At  the  sight  of  death  the  victor,  even 
flushed  with  triumph,  weeps  when  he  beholds  through 
how  many  waves  of  destruction  he  has  waded  on 
to  glory.  There  is  but  one  sentiment,  one  feeling,  which 
the  Holy  Ghost  declares  to  be  as  strong  as  death,  and  that 
feeling  is  love.  It  was  his  love  for  the  Church  that  fed  his 
great  heart,  that  was  the  consolation  of  his  mind  when 
every  other  consolation  was  gone,  that  enabled  him  to 
spend  seven  years  of  such  trial  that  the  very  fact  of  his 
outliving  them  so  long  made  him  the  wonder  of  friends 
and  enemies  alike.  And  when  he  was  dying,  and  the 
very  agonies  of  death  were  upon  him,  forth  from  his  dy- 
ing lips  came  the  words  to  the  cardinals  around  him : 
"  Guard  the  Church  that  I  love." 

!Now  he  is  gone.  On  earth  lie  did  not  witness  much  of 
the  Church's  glory.  Other  pontiffs  lived  in  different  ages, 
and  they  saw  the  triumphs  of  the  Church,  sometimes  in 
one  country,  sometimes  in  another.  Pius  IX.  saw 
not  its  triumph  anywhere ;  every  hand  was  raised 
against  him,,  every  government  had  turned  upon 
him,  every  element  of  the  so-called  progress  of  our 
day  considered  that  it  could  not  establish  itself  even 
as  a  scientific  principle  until  it  first  denied  his  position. 
And  he  passed  away  in  the  midst  of  these  sorrows.     But, 


34  PANTlGtRTC   ON  PlUS  IX. 

O  dearly  beloved  !  what  must  liave  been  his  joy,  as  we 
hope  and  believe  that  joy  is  already  his,  when  he  belield 
the  glories  of  the  Ghnrch  triurnphant,'Vhen  he  saw  there 
all  that  lie  had  already  seen,  exalted  though  he  was,  dim- 
ly as  through  the  glass  of  faith  on  eafth  !  Oh  !  what  was  ^ 
his  joy  when  every  class  of  saint  came  forth  to  greet  the^ 
gi'eaWi  Pope.  The  martyrs  of  Japan  and  Holland,  whom 
he  had  canonized,  rose  up  to  meet  him.  St.  Mary  Ala- 
coque,  the  victim  of  love  in  the  Sacred  Heart,  rose  up  and 
headed  the  holy  virgins,  for  he  had  beatified  her ;  St. 
Francis  de  Sales  and  St.  Alphonsus  Liguori,  who  had  re- 
ceived at  the  hands  of  him  who  was  approaching  heaven's 
gates  the  bright  aureola  of  their  doctorship — they  rose  up 
to  meet  him.  Mary,  his  Queen  and  Mother,  met  him  who 
had  proclaimed  her  glorious  title  of  the  Immaculate  Con- 
ception. Peter  and  his  glorious  following  of  crowned  pon- 
tiffs came  to  meet  liim.  Every  element  of  incidental  glory 
heaven  could  administer  seems  to  have  been  waiting  him, 
and  in  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus,  the  devotion  to  which  he 
had  awakened  in  every  land,  he  found  the  essential  glory 
of  the  beatific  vision  of  the  Lord.  This  we  hope,  this  we 
believe;  and,  looking  back  upon  that  glorious  life,  we 
have  every  reason  to  be  confident  that  he  who  was  our 
father  on  earth  now  enjoys  endless  glory  with  the  Father 
in  heaven. 

The  Church's  sorrow,  dearly  beloved,  must  soon 
change  to  joy.  The  Church  cannot  remain  long  without  her 
visible  head ;  she  never  remained  for  an  instant  without 
her  invisible  Head.  The  Church' s  councils  of  the  world 
will  assemble  in  the  halls  of  the  most  venerable  palace  on 
earth,  the  Vatican.  And  there — there  among  those  who 
will  liave  to  decide  the  solemn  and  the  grand  question — 
there  will  the  Irish  race  and  this  poor  down-trodden  peo- 
ple find  a  voice  ;  for,  for  the  first  time  in  any  papal  con- 
clave, an  Irish  cardinal  goes  out  from  Ireland  to  take  a  part 
in  its  decisions,  and  have  a  voice  in  the  election  of  a  sovereign 
pontiff.  This  also  did  lie  do  in  that  love  for  liis  Church  ; 
this  also  did  he  do  from  the  same  love  that  prompted 


Panegtric  on  Pius  IX.  35 

him  to  empty  his  already  scanty  treasury  that  the  people 
of  Ireland,  famine-stricken,  might  be  relieved  and  fed  in 
their  misery  ;  this  also  did  he  do  as  a  crown  and  testimony 
of  love  that  he  gave  to  his  people,  for  one  of  his  latest  ut- 
terances when  he  was  approaching  his  end  was  his  answer 
to  the  Irish  deputation,  when  he  said  :  "In  aU  my  afflic- 
tions Ireland  has  been  always  faithful  to  me  and  has  never 
deserted  me."  O  father  !  wherever  thy  spirit  is  this  day — 
whether,  as  we  hope  and  believe,  shining  in  the  bright  light 
of  God,  or,  perhaps,  expiating  by  a  brief  purgatory  some 
little  fault,  some  little  spot  or  stain  that  may  be  upon  thy 
soul,  that  suffered  so  much — wherever  thou  art,  Pius  IX., 
the  heart  of  Ireland  follows  thee  to-day  in  grief  and  in 
mourning,  and  that  Ireland  which  was  so  faithful  to  thee 
and  all  thy  predecessors  before  thee  will  await  in  joy  the 
appearance  of  thy  successor,  and  bow  down  in  love  at  his 
feetl 


The  Grandeur  of  Pope  Pius  IX. 


This  lecture  of  Father  Burke  has  been  delivered  many  times.  It  is  one  of 
the  best  pen-portraits  of  the  grand  old  Pope  which  have  ever  been  given 
to  the  -world.  It  teaches  us  that  we  may  overcome  the  greatest  tiials 
and  difficulties  if  we  only  keep  in  our  hearts  the  grare  of  our  Lord  and 
Saviour.  This  grace  we  can  only  obtain  by  prayer  and  meditation. 
Let  us  ponder  on  the  goodness  and  greatness  of  Pius  IX.  His  was  a 
s'ormy  and  perilous  journey  o'er  tlie  sea  of  life  in  this  world.  He  died 
a  conqueror,  and  "  great  is  his  reward  in  heaven." 

THIS  nineteenth,  century  has  been  called,  and  not  without 
■^  reason,  a  wonderful  age  ;  and  amongst  its  many  ad- 
mirers, it  may  seem  strange  to  your  ears  to  hear  there  is 
not  one,  perhaps,  more  ardent  or  more  sincere  in  his  admi- 
ration of  the  age  in  which  we  live  than  I  myself,  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  old  mediseval  period.  I  am  proud  of  the 
nineteenth  century — proud  of  its  spirit,  proud  of  the  great 
results  of  its  scientific  knowledge  and  resources,  proud  of 
the  age  which  has  annihilated  space,  which  has  grasped 
the  whole  world  in  its  scientific  hand,  which  has  caught 
the  very  lightnings  of  heaven,  crushed  them  down,  and 
made  them  the  faithful  messengers  of  man  from  end  to  end 
of  the  earth.  Yes,  I  am  indeed  proud  of  the  wonders  and 
glories  of  this  nineteenth  century. 

But  I  hold  that  the  most  wondrous  and  most  glorious 
thing  in  it  is  the  pontificate  of  Pius  IX.,  Pope  of  Rome. 
For  in  all  the  other  triumphs  of  the  nineteenth  century  we 
beheld  the  traces  of  man — wonderful  triumphs  of  human 
invention  and  human  genius,  the  developments  of  nature's 
powers,  the  discovery  of  nature's  hidden  laws.  But  when 
we  contemplate  the  man  who  now  for  nearly  thirty  years 

86 


The  Grandeur  of  Pope  Pius  IX.  37 

has  been  at  the  head  of  the  Catholic  Church,  and  filled  the 
mighty  and  awful  position  of  Vicar  of  Christ  amongst  His 
people  on  this  earth,  it  is  no  longer  the  mere  energy  of 
man,  the  mere  resources  of  human  genius,  or  the  strength 
of  human  character  that  we  contemplate,  but  we  see  real- 
ized in  this  Pontiff  the  highest  and  most  glorious  promises 
that  God  ever  made  to  his  Church.  (Applause.)  I 
am  not  come  here  to  speak  this  evening  of  the  per- 
sonal character  of  Pius  IX.  The  subject  of  my  lec- 
ture is  not  the  Pope  personal  and  individual.  If  this 
were  my  theme  I  might  feel  it  a  grateful  and  fruit- 
ful one.  Yes,  I  have  knelt  before  the  man  when  in 
my  early  youth.  I  received  the  blessing  of  our  Holy 
Father  in  the  prime  of  his  glorious  manhood,  and  I 
have  gone  again  and  again  and  knelt  before  him  when  I 
saw  his  sorrows  bowing  him  down  and  whitening  his  hair, 
and  marked  the  lines  of  care  on  that  manly  and  once  so 
fair  face  ;  and  the  record  of  these  times  would  make  the 
personal  liistory  of  the  Pope  fruitful  to  me.  But  I  have 
not  to  deal  with  it,  but  with  his  pontificate  ;  I  am  not  to 
speak  to  you  of  the  individual,  but  of  his  long  reign  with 
which  Almighty  God  has  blessed  His  Church.  I  have  not 
to  speak  to  you  of  a  temporal  king  unthroned  and  un- 
crowned, but  of  a  Pontiff  whose  throne  can  never  be 
shaken  and  whose  crown  can  never  be  torn  from  his  brow  ; 
for  his  throne  is  founded  on  a  rock  and  his  crown  set  on 
his  head  by  Jesus  Christ. 

It  is  of  the  Sovereign  Pontiff,  the  supreme  head  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Catholic  Church,  the  Vicar  of  God  on  earth, 
the  visible  head  and  governor  of  God's  Church,  the  man 
who  joins  in  himself  the  fulness  of  apostolic  power  and  ju- 
risdiction, the  man  whose  hand  is  on  the  helm  of  the  bark 
of  God,  to  steer  her  safe  through  every  storm  and  bring 
her  forth  triumphantly  from  every  wild  sea — it  is  of  this 
man,  in  his  papal,  spiritual  character  and  pontificate  as 
such,  that  I  have  come  to  speak  to  you  this  evening.  And 
I  will  lay  down  this  proposition,  which  I  will  endeavor  to 
prove,  that  since  the  day  when  Christ  laid  His  hand  on  the 


38  The  Grandeur  of  Pope  Pius  IX. 

head  of  Peter  and  said,  "  Thou  art  Peter,  and  on  this  Rock 
I  will  build  my  Church,  and  the  gates  of  hell  shall  not  pre- 
vail against  it :  I  have  pi-ayed  for  thee,  O  Peter  !  that  thy 
faith  fail  not" — since  that  day  when  Peter  received  his 
high  commission  and  the  keys  of  tlie  kingdom  of  heaven, 
although  his  successors  exhibit  a  list  of  names  to  many  of 
which  the  world  has  appended  the  title  of  great,  there 
never  was  a  greater  pope  than  Pius  IX.,  or  a  greater  pon- 
tificate than  his.  His  pontificate  is  a  theme  not  only  of 
joy  but  of  sadness.  When  we  look  on  the  majestic  figure 
of  this  uncrowned  king,  but  still  crowned,  imperishable 
Pontiff,  our  hearts  are  filled  with  Catholic  joy,  but  yet  our 
eyes  are  full  of  tears  of  sorrow.  But  it  is  not  with  our 
sorrow  that  I  have  come  here  to  deal  this  evening,  nor 
with  a  good  man  persecuted  in  his  old  age,  and  life  made 
bitter  to  him  when  he  is  anxious  to  be  with  God.  It  is 
not  of  this  sorrow  I  am  going  to  speak  to  you,  but  of  the 
imperishable  worth  that  cannot  pass  away,  of  titles  that 
cannot  be  forfeited,  of  a  pontificate  in  which,  as  head  of 
the  Church,  Pope  Pius  has  shown  himself  one  of  the  most 
truly  glorious  pontiffs  who  ever  wielded  the  sceptre  of 
Peter. 

And  now,  to  put  this  thesis  clearly  and  intelligibly,  I 
must  ask  you  to  consider  what  are  the  real  glories  of  a 
I>ope'  s  reign  or  pontificate.  You  know  that  there  must  be 
a  given  standard  by  which  we  can  measure  the  worth  and 
true  glory  of  this  man's  reign.  We  must  see  how  far  h© 
has  come  up  to  that  standard.  We  must  also  see  how  far 
his  natural  character,  combining  with  divine  grace,  has  led 
him  to  the  complete  fulfilment  of  the  duties  and  the  ac- 
complishment of  the  glories  of  his  high  position  in  the 
Church  of  God. 

What  is  that  standard  \  Well,  the  first  standard  is — 
and  you  will,  perhaps,  smile  to  hear  it — the  first  rule  by 
which  we  must  measure  the  greatness  of  any  pope  is  the 
hatred  the  world  has  for  him.  Is  he  well  hated  ?  Is  he 
well  abused  ?  Is  he  detested  ?  Are  men  sighing  and  long- 
ing for  his  death  %    Are  bad  men  trembling  if  his  life 


Tme  Granbeur  of  Pope  Pius  IX,  39 

slioald  be  prolonged  %  If  these  tilings  be  so,  it  is  a  sure 
sign  that  he  is  a  very  great  man.  You  remember  that 
O'Connell,  the  immortal  Liberator,  used  to  say  of  himself 
that  he  was  the  best-abused  and  the  best-hated  man  in  the 
House  of  Commons ;  and  he  made  that  one  of  his  great 
titles  to  the  consideration  of  the  people.  Well,  the  world 
outside  the  Catholic  Church  is  one  of  her  greatest  enemies. 
The  more  faithfully  a  man  serves  his  God  the  more  the 
world  detests  him  ;  and  therefore  the  Apostle  Paul  said : 
*'  If  I  please  men  I  am  no  longer  a  servant  of  Christ."  In 
the  long  line  of  martyr  popes,  where  so  many  fell  victims 
to  the  world' s  hatred  and  suffered  exile  or  death,  there  is 
not  one  so  hated  by  the  enemies  of  the  Church  as  Pius  IX. 
(Applause.)  Nay,  more,  whatever  the  secret  of  it  is,  he  has 
managed  to  make  himself  more  feared,  as  well  as  hated, 
than  any  of  liis  predecessors. 

At  this  moment  the  strongest  man  in  the  world  is  Bis- 
marck, a  man  of  supreme  ability  and  genius,  and  successful 
in  all  that  he  has  undertaken.  He  has  an  empire  behind  him 
to  back  him  up  with  nearly  three  million  armed  men.  He 
is  not  afraid  of  any  one  ;  he  need  not  be.  He  can  put  his 
foot  on  the  neck  of  France,  he  has  humbled  Austria,  he 
has  crushed  down  everything  that  came  before  him.  Surely 
that  man  knows  no  fear.  There  is  not  a  man  or  a  nation 
that  he  is  afraid  of,  save  one.  He  is  afraid  of  the  old  Pope 
of  Rome.  (Laughter  and  applause.)  Bismarck  is  afraid 
of  his  life  of  the  Pope.  (Laughter.)  He  is  always 
crying  out,  "Oh!  save  me  from  that  dreadful  man. 
I  must  get  three  or  four  million  more  men.  God 
knows  what  he  intends  to  do  with  me !  I  must  stick  more 
bishops  into  jail.  When  is  he  going  to  die  % "  And  then 
he  writes  letters  to  the  different  cabinets  of  Europe,  say- 
ing :  "  When  he  dies  you  must  join  with  me  in  seeing  after 
his  successor."  And  all  this  while  the  grand  old  Pope  sits 
in  his  chamber  in  the  Vatican  and  says,  "I  will  not  die." 

I  asked  a  poor  laboring  man  I  met  on  the  road  if  he 
heard  the  news. 

*'0h  !  yes,"  said  he,  "I  read  the  papers."^ 


40  The  Grandeur  of  Pope  Pius  IX. 

I  said :  *'  Is  it  not  a  wonderful  thing  how  long  the  Pope 
is  living  % ' ' 

"Begorra  it  is,"  said  he. 

*'  Why  is  he  living  so  long  ? " 

"The  Lord  lets  him  live  so  long,"  said  he,  "to  deprive 
Bismarck  of  his  appetite."     (Great  laughter.) 

But  this  is  not  the  real  standard  by  which  we  are  to 
measure  the  greatness  of  Pius  IX.  and  his  pontificate. 
There  is  one  far  higher.  It  is  this :  the  more  any  pontificate 
or  reign  of  a  pope  brings  out  and  proves  the  highest  attri- 
butes of  God's  Church,  the  more  glorious  that  pontificate 
is ;  and  never,  in  the  long  line  of  Roman  pontiffs,  has  any 
pope  brought  out  so  strongly  the  highest  attributes  of  the 
Church  of  God  as  Pius  IX.  during  his  pontificate  of  well- 
nigh  thirty  years.  AVhat  are  these  divine  attributes  of  the 
Catholic  Church,  and  how  have  they  come  out  under  the 
glorious  guidance  of  this  wonderful  man?  My  friends, 
any  man.  Catholic,  Protestant,  or  unbeliever,  who  reads 
the  new  law  must  come  to  the  conclusion  that,  whoever 
Christ  was.  He  intended  to  found  a  Church.  He  is  always 
speaking  of  it,  telling  what  kind  of  a  thing  it  is  to  be, 
describing  it  as  His  kingdom.  His  city.  His  place.  He 
gathers  together  His  apostles,  and  He  tells  them  that  they 
are  His  Church.  No  matter  who  or  what  He  is,  He  intended 
to  found  a  Church.  But  we  know  and  believe  He  is  the 
Son  of  God.  If  He  came  to  found  a  Church,  and  if  He 
founded  that  Church,  it  is  of  God,  and  it  must  be  for  ever 
and  for  ever,  as  the  Son  of  God  has  intended  it  to  be.  (Ap- 
plause.) 

Now,  He  has  set  certain  marks  on  that  Church  which 
make  it  the  Church  of  Christ.  They  belong  to  her  su- 
pematurally,  as  they  come  to  her  from  God,  and  they  be- 
long to  her  imperishably.  They  are  unity,  sanctity,  apos- 
tolicity,  strength,  and  immortality.  Christ  made  His 
Church  one ;  He  made  it  holy ;  He  made  it  apostolic  ; 
and  He  made  it  the  strongest  thing  that  the  hand  of  God 
ever  built  up  in  heaven  or  on  earth.  (Applause.)  And  He 
not  only  made  His  Church  aU  this,  but  He  took  good  care 


The  Grandeur  of  Pope  Pius  IX.  41 

that  all  these  gifts  should  be  ensured  to  her  and  remain 
with  her.  As  to  her  sanctity,  he  guaranteed  it  to  her 
through  the  sacraments  which  belong  to  the  faithful. 

The  sanctity  of  the  Church  is  scattered  by  the  hand  of 
God  over  the  universe.  The  same  Omnipotent  hand  that 
gave  the  Church  her  sanctity  gave  her  the  other  three  gifts. 
He  made  Himself  the  centre  of  her  unity  ;  He  made  Himself 
the  fountain-head  of  her  apostolicity  ;  He  made  Himself 
the  guardian  of  her  strength  and  immortality.  Listen  to 
His  words  at  the  Last  Supper  when  He  yjrayed :  "O 
God,  Father  in  heaven !  keep  them  one,  let  them  be  one. 
I  have  given  them  my  word.  Let  them  be  one  in  unity, 
as  I  and  tliou,  the  Father,  are  one."  Thus  He  made  Him- 
self and  His  union  with  the  Father  the  centre  of  His 
Church' s  union. 

Secondly,  He  made  Himself  the  fountain-head  of  her 
apostolicity,  for  He  said  to  the  apostles  :  "The  Father  in 
heaven  sent  me,  and  I  send  you.  Go,  therefore,  teach  all 
nations,  and  tell  them  all  the  things  I  have  told  you." 
Therefore  He  made  Himself  the  fountain-head  and  stand- 
ing-point of  her  apostolicity,  so  that  every  apostle  went 
forth  in  the  name  and  on  the  mission  of  his  Divine  Master, 
and  they  were  all  able  to  say,  "  Christ  sent  us,  and  there- 
fore we  have  come  to  you."      (Applause.) 

Thirdly,  He  made  Himself  the  guardian  and  guarantee  of 
the  Church's  strength  and  immortality  ;  for  He  said  to  her  : 
"Behold,  I  am  with  you  all  days,  unto  the  consumma- 
tion of  the  world,  and  the  gates  of  hell  shall  never  prevail 
against  you.  I  have  given  you  my  word,  and  heaven  and 
earth  shall  pass  away,  but  my  word  shall  not  pass  away." 
Whatever  falls  against  that  rock  shall  be  crushed,  and 
whatever  it  falls  against  wiU  be  crushed  to  dust.  There- 
fore He  declares  He  is  the  source  of  the  Church's  strength, 
and  she  has  a  strength  that  no  power  on  earth  or  hell  can 
resist  to  the  end  of  time.  (Applause.)  Now,  my  next  con- 
sideration is  the  love  of  Christ.  He  was  about  to  leave  this 
world  to  ascend  into  heaven.  But  before  He  went  He  select- 
ed one  of  the  apostles  and  made  him  the  head  of  the  Apos- 


42  The  Grandeur  of  Pope  Pius  IX. 

tolic  College.  He  made  liim  His  own  representative  ;  He 
made  him  His  own  vicar ;  He  conferred  on  liim  His  own 
powers.  Peter  was  the  man  thus  selected.  And  when 
Chiist  departed  from  this  earth  Peter  stepped  in  and  took 
His  place — the  place  of  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  as  His  vicar 
and  His  visible  representative,  and  he  became  to  the  Church, 
to  the  end  of  time,  all  that  Jesus  Christ,  its  divine  founder, 
was.  (Applause.)  Therefore  Peter,  as  pope,  became  the 
centre  of  the  Church's  unity,  the  fountain-head  of  her  apos- 
tolicity,  and  the  guardian  of  her  strength  and  immortality. 
And  the  more  these  three  attributes  of  the  Catholic  Church 
shine  out  in  the  pontificate  of  any  of  the  popes,  the  greater 
is  that  pope  and  the  greater  is  his  pontificate,  (Applause.) 
My  friends,  this  great  Pontiff  is  the  centre  of  the  unity  of 
the  Church.  There  were  a  great  many  popes  who  went 
before  him ;  there  was  a  long  line  of  martyr  popes,  who 
lived  in  times  when  the  world  was  so  divided  that  the 
pontiffs  were  compelled  to  distribute  more  of  their  spiri- 
tual power  to  the  bishops.  There  were  pontiffs  who  suc- 
ceeded these  martyred  ones — Leo  the  Great,  Gregory  I.,  and 
another  Gregory  to  whom  was  given  the  title  of  "Mag- 
nus." But  when  do  we  find  the  unity  of  tlie  Church  so 
strongly  developed  and  shown  as  in  the  last  General  Coun- 
cil of  the  Vatican?  (Applause.)  Eight  hundred  bishops 
from  all  ends  of  the  earth  were  there.  Never  did  the  Ca- 
tholic Church  behold  assembled  together  so  great  an  array 
of  mitred  prelates.  Around  these  eight  hundred  bishops 
were  hundreds  of  learned  men,  philosophers,  and  theolo- 
gians, filled  with  the  stores  of  theological  knowledge 
which  the  experience  of  eighteen  hundred  and  seventy 
years  had  supplied.  There  they  were,  the  bishops  of  the 
universal  Churcli,  no  longer  confined  to  this  country  or 
to  that,  but  spread  out  over  the  whole  world,  speaking  the 
language  of  every  clime  under  the  sun,  arrayed  in  differ- 
ent costumes,  with  different  habits,  thoughts,  and  pre- 
judices ;  and  there  in  the  midst  of  them  stands  the  scep- 
tred monarch  of  the  Church  of  God. 

He  lises  in  their  midst,  and  calls  on  them  in  the  name 


The  Grandeur  of  Pope  Pius  IX.  43 

of  the  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  and  in  the  name  of 
over  two  hundred  millions  of  Catholics,  to  make  an  act  of 
faith  in  the  unity  of  the  Catholic  Church.  And  forth  from 
the  recesses  of  by -gone  ages  comes  a  voice  crying  out  that 
Peter  is  the  rock  on  which  the  Church  of  God  is  founded. 
(Applause.)  Forth  from  the  martyrs'  graves  comes  the  testi- 
mony: *' The  Pope  is  the  successor  of  Peter."  From  the 
depths  of  mediaeval  Christianity  comes  the  voice  of  Thomas 
Aquinas,  saying  that  the  successor  of  Peter  is  the  Vicar  of 
God.  From  God's  bishops  comes  a  voice  proclaiming, 
"Thou,  Pius,  art  the  successor  of  Peter,  the  Vicar  of 
Christ  (applause),  to  whose  word,  speaking  ex  cathedra^ 
the  Church  will  bow  down  as  to  the  voice  of  Jesus 
Christ."  Will  any  voice  arise  in  that  vast  assem- 
blage to  deny  his  claim?  No;  God's  bishops  all  bow 
down  and  say  it  is  true  as  the  Gospel  from  which  it 
comes.  Will  any  bishop  rise  up,  like  Photius  of  old 
in  Constantinople,  to  deny  it  %  No.  Never  was  there 
such  unanimity  in  the  Church's  proclamation  of  a  dog- 
ma as  when  that  dogma  comes  forth  from  the  lips  of 
Pius  IX.,  "The  pope  is  Christ's  Vicar  on  earth."  If 
this  unity,  then,  this  great  attribute  that  so  clearly  distin- 
guishes her  from  Jarring  sects  and  makes  her  the  image  of 
the  one  God — one  in  His  personality  when  He  became 
man,  one  in  His  prayer  to  the  Father  for  His  Church — 
if  unity  be  a  characteristic  of  the  true  Church,  it  has 
never  been  illustrated  so  grandly  before  the  world  as 
in  the  glorious  figure  of  Pius  IX.  (Applause.)  But, 
more  than  that,  Christ  said  His  Church  was  an  apos- 
tolic Church.  She  is  not  only  a  working  but  an  ag- 
gressive Church.  We  Catholics  are  blamed  by  our  fel- 
low-citizens because,  they  say,  we  cannot  keep  ourselves 
quiet.  "  Is  it  not  too  bad,"  they  say,  "  that  we  can't  live 
in  peace  and  not  mind  religious  questions  %  These  Catho- 
lics are  constantly  pestering  us  with  their  Sisters  of  Mercy, 
their  Little  Sisters,  and  friars,  and  parish  priests,  and 
preaching  to  us  about  Catholicity."  Well,  my  friends, 
we  cannot  help  it.    If  there  be  any  non-CathoUo  friends 


44  The  Qrandeub  of  Pope  Pius  IX. 

».  • 
here  to-nightj  I  say   *  We  would  let  you  alone  if  we  could, 

but  if  we  did  you  and  the  world  would  never  become  Ca- 
tholic, and  you  and  the  world  would  run  great  risk  of  eter- 
nal damnation.  Caritas  OTiHsti  urget  nos.^^  Do  we  not 
read,  "  Woe  unto  me  if  I  do  not  preach  the  Gospel  of  God  "  ? 
Christ  told  His  disciples  to  teach  all  nations.  St.  Paul  re- 
peated the  lesson,  and  preached  in  season  and  out  of  sea- 
son. We,  therefore,  cannot  let  the  world  alone.  The 
Church  must  work,  must  spread  the  truth,  must  convert 
the  nations.  If  there  are  savage  heathens,  she  must  send 
out  her  missionaries  to  them  to  suffer  and,  perhaps,  to  die 
the  martyr' s  death.  Under  the  burning  sun  of  India  or 
amidst  the  snowy  mountains  of  the  frozen  N"orth,  the  Je- 
suit or  Lazarist  will  find  his  way  to  those  who  sit  in  dark- 
ness, to  teach  them  the  words  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  receive, 
perhaps,  as  his  reward  the  stroke  of  the  lance  or  the  toma- 
hawk, and  seal  the  truth  of  his  mission  by  the  testimony 
of  blood,  which  may  yet  convert  his  savage  murderer  to 
the  faith  of  Jesus  Chrilt.     (Applause.) 

I  will  ask  our  Protestant  friends  where,  in  the  annals 
of  history  since  Christ  founded  His  Church  and  the  last 
of  the  apostles  died — where  is  the  nation,  where  is  the 
province,  where  is  the  people  that  has  received  Chris- 
tianity except  from  the  popes  of  Rome  ?  Who  sent  St. 
Patrick  to  Ireland  ?  The  holy  Pope  Celestine,  who  said 
to  him,  "I  consecrate  you  Bishop  of  Ireland;  go  and 
enkindle  the  light  of  divine  faith  amongst  its  people." 
(Applause.)  St.  Patrick  came,  and  announced  to  the 
assembled  monarchs  and  bards  of  Ireland  at  Tai'a,  "I 
am  a  messenger  to  you  from  God,  sent  by  the  Pope 
of  Rome."  And  Ireland  took  the  message  of  the  apostle, 
because  he  had  the  mission  of  the  Pope  of  Rome.  And 
Patrick  ended  his  mission  as  he  began  it,  for  his  last 
words  to  his  disciples  were:  "If  you  have  any  disputes 
between  you,  go  to  Rome  as  you  would  to  a  mother." 
(Applause.) 

Who  sent  St.  Augustine  to  England  ?    The  blessed  and 
great  Pope  Gregory.     Who  sent  their  apostles  through 


The  Grajstdeur  of  Pope  Pius  IX.  45 

the  wild  forests  of  Germany  and  the  north  ?    The  popes 
of  Rome. 

No  man  can  convert  unless  he  has  his  mission  and 
diploma  from  Rome.  "]N"o  man  can  preach  except  he  be 
sent"  ;  and  the  one  to  send  is  the  supreme  head  of  the 
Church  of  Jesus  Christ. 

Now,  where,  on  the  long  roll  of  sovereign  pontiffs,  is 
the  pope  who  has  shown  more  of  the  power  and  strength 
of  the  apostolical  spirit  than  Pius  IX.  ?  It  is  now  nearly 
thirty  years  since  he  began  to  reign.  He  has  exceeded  the 
years  of  the  pontificate  of  Peter.  His  pontificate  is  an  his- 
torical miracle,  for  he  is  the  only  pope  that  has  reigned 
longer  than  St.  Peter.  When  he  began  that  pontificate 
the  bishops  of  America  were  few  and  far  between — scarce- 
ly twenty  ;  no,  nor  anything  like  twenty.  To-day  the  land 
is  covered  with  cathedrals  ;  the  Catholic  faith  is  the  one, 
united,  respectable,  and  dominant  religion  of  the  United 
States  of  America,  and  the  episcopate  is  one  of  the  most 
glorious  branches  of  the  great  tree  of  God's  Church. 
(Applause.)  When  Pius  IX.  began  his  reign  there  was 
not  a  single  territorial  bishop  in  England.  To-day  this 
great  man,  in  the  fulness  ot  his  apostolic  spirit,  has 
restored  once  more  the  glories  of  England's  hierarchy, 
and  has  rebuilt  the  edifice  of  her  stately  Church,  which 
seemed  to  have  crumbled  to  ruins  under  three  hun- 
dred years  of  persecution.  (Applause.)  His  labors 
extended  over  the  universal  Church  to  the  farthest 
ends  of  the  earth.  In  the  far  antipodes,  in  Australia 
and  Polynesia,  on  the  shores  of  the  Pacific  and  the  shores 
of  Labrador,  wherever  the  sun  shines,  the  Catholic  Church 
flourishes  under  the  apostolic  hand  of  Pius  IX.  Finally, 
Christ  has  endowed  His  Church  with  a  strength  that  no- 
thing can  resist.  We  have  seen  every  day,  and  the  testi- 
mony of  history  repeats  it,  that  there  is  nothing  indestruc- 
tible in  this  world. 

In  our  own  days  we  have  seen  the  collapse  of  dynas- 
ties that  seemed  to  us  invincible.  We  have  seen  the 
proud,  courageous  soldiers  of  France  dashed  to  the  earth 


46  The  Grandeus  of  Pope  Pius  IX. 

and  hnmbled  under  the  iron  heel  of  their  German  con- 
querors. We  are  compelled  to  say  that  everything  in  this 
world,  no  matter  how  strong  it  may  seem,  has  in  it  the 
elements  of  weakness,  save  and  except  the  Catholic  Church, 
because  she  rests  on  the  strength  of  the  divine  promise, 
that  can  never  fail,  and  on  the  principles  of  justice,  mercy, 
honor,  and  of  knowledge. 

These  i^rinciples  are  founded  on  the  truthfulness  of 
God.  Principles  such  as  these  are  indestructible.  Arms 
cannot  destroy  them ;  cannon  cannot  pulverize  them ; 
armies  cannot  crush  them  ;  brute  force  cannot  break  them 
down ;  they  rest  on  God,  and  are  a  portion  of  his  divine 
truth  asserted  amongst  men.  And  such  strength  and  such 
principles  are  the  strength  and  the  principles  of  Pius  IX. 
(Applause.)  If  we  co;;iipare  him  with  other  jjopes,  we  will 
find  that  the  greatest  amongst  them  must  take  a  lower  grade 
than  that  of  our  Holy  Father.  Of  all  the  figures  that  loom 
out  on  the  records  of  history  there  is  none  that  is  greater 
than  that  of  Gregory,  or,  as  he  was  called,  Hildebrand,  who 
stood  up  for  the  Church's  rights  and  liberties,  and  fought 
single-handed  all  the  power  of  the  German  emperors,  and 
humbled  to  the  dust  the  greatest  and  most  wicked  of  them. 
But  if  he  did,  he  had  Catholic  France  to  back  him  up  and 
the  God  of  truth  and  faith  to  sustain  him.  He  had  great 
and  powerful  monarchs  to  sustain  him.  Pius  IX.  has  stood 
alone  before  all  the  powers  of  this  world.  Alone,  but  that 
God  supported  him,  he  battled  with  heresy  and  infidelity. 
Left  alone  to  the  strength  of  his  principles  of  faith,  honor, 
and  justice,  the  whole  world  demanded  of  him  the  com- 
mission of  an  act  of  disloyalty  to  his  Divine  Master,  and 
in  the  face  of  the  whole  world  he  flung  out  his  noble  de- 
fiance and  refusal — the  words  Non  possumus.  That  was 
the  occasion  when  he  was  asked  to  surrender  a  little  child 
to  the  Jewish  religion.  A  little  Jewish  child  had  been 
baptized.  The  law  of  faith  says  the  moment  a  child  is 
baptized  that  moment  he  becomes  the  property  of  Jesus 
Christ  and  His  Church.  Such  a  child  was  baptized.  Pius 
IX.  was  called  on  to  give  him  up  and  surrender  that 


The  Grandeur  of  Pope  Pius  IX.  47 

property  of  his  Divine  Master,  to  play  false  to  the  interests 
of  his  Divine  Lord  ;  and  he  was  summoned  to  do  so  at  the 
peril  of  his  libert}^  and  of  his  temporal  dominion.  He 
stood  fast  to  that  child,  despite  the  power  of  England  and 
France  and  the  acts  of  ambassadors  writing  their  scheming 
protocols.  Everything  that  was  possible  was  brought  to 
bear  on  that  iron  old  man,  but  he  stood  there  and  said, 
"You  may  tear  the  heart  out  of  my  bosom,  but  I  tell  you 
I  will  never  do  it."  Non  possumus  !  There  is  the  only 
answer  of  this  grand  old  man.  But,  coming  from  the  lips 
of  the  Vicar  of  God,  that  answer  was  so  powerful  that  all 
the  powers  of  a  hostile  and  wicked  world  were  compelled 
to  bow  down  before  it.  And  I  myself  have  shaken  the 
hands  of  that  very  child  when  he  grew  up  and  was  filled 
with  all  the  glory  and  purity  of  the  priesthood.  (Ap- 
plause.) 

It  is  not  only  the  strength  to  say  JSfon  possumus  that  is 
characteristic  of  this  great  old  man.  There  is  one  greater 
attribute  that  belongs  to  the  Pope  of  Rome  which  is  well 
understood  by  all  true  Catholics,  and  that  is  the  attribute 
of  divine  sagacity  to  know  and  interpret  the  mind  of  the 
Church  dogmatically  in  the  proper  time  and  season.  And 
how  well  every  Catholic  knows  this  is  the  attribute  of 
the  Pope ! 

I  once  said  to  a  poor  old  peasant  in  the  West  of  Eng- 
land: "  Do  you  think  the  Pope  will  declare  the  Immacu- 
late Conception  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  Mary  ? "  "  Whether 
he  does  or  not,"  was  the  answer,  "we  know  it  is  the  truth, 
and  when  the  time  comes  he  will  know  better  than  any  one 
else."  In  these  simple  words  he  showed  that  he  knew 
this  great  attribute  of  the  Pope.  Pius  IX.  has  risen  to  the 
glory  of  proclaiming,  on  his  own  infallible  authority,  with- 
out waiting  for  a  General  Council,  the  Immaculate  Concep- 
tion of  the  Blessed  Virgin  Mary.  John  in  Patmos  had  the 
glory  of  seeing  Mary  crowned  in  heaven,  but  to  proclaim 
her  Immaculate  Conception  as  a  dogma  of  the  Church  was 
a  glory  reserved  for  eighteen  hundred  years  for  Pius  IX. 
(Aj)plause.)     But  far  more  wonderful  is  the  sagacity  whose 


48  The  Grandeur  of  Pope  Pius  IX. 

exhibition  has  followed  on  the  loss  of  his  temporal  power. 
Forecasting  the  dark  ages  that  were  coming  on,  when  with 
prophetic  eye  he  beheld  himself  a  prisoner  and  his  succes- 
sors exiles  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  he  saw  the  time  was 
come  to  save  the  Catholic  Church  from  confusion — to  save 
the  unity  of  the  Church  in  her  head.  He  called  his  bishops 
together  and  crowned  the  edifice  of  the  Church  by  the 
declaration  of  the  infallibility  of  her  head.     (Applause.) 

The  bishops  came.  He  spoke— the  wisdom  of  God 
spoke  in  him — and  the  successor  of  Peter  was  dogmatical- 
ly declared  to  be  what  the  Church  had  always  believed 
him  to  be.  The  man  who  is  the  head  of  the  Church,  speak- 
ing ex  cathedra,  speaking  her  faith  and  formulating  her 
dogmas,  cannot  ask  the  Church  to  tell  a  lie  ;  for  the  Holy 
Ghost  would  come  and  strike  him  dead  if  he  dared  to  tell 
her  a  lie.  (Applause.)  Now,  the  Pope  may  lay  down  his 
temporal  power,  to  be  again  given  back  to  him  in  God's 
good  time.  But,  be  he  exile  or  martyr,  there  is  that  in 
Iiim  which  the  Church  declares  to  be  his,  and  which  can- 
not belong  to  any  other  man — the  mysterious  countersign 
of  his  infallibility,  and  on  that  infallibility  she  rests  and 
bids  defiance  to  all  the  monarchs  of  the  earth.  They  may 
hinder  her  bishops  from  assembling  in  council ;  the  Church 
has  her  head  in  the  Pope.  They  may  cast  her  bishops  and 
priests  into  prison  or  put  them  to  death ;  she  has  the  declara- 
tion of  faith  in  the  same  infallible  guide,  and  she  owes  that  to 
the  wonderful  energy  and  sagacity  of  Pius  IX.  (Applause  ) 
Therefore  he,  beyond  all  other  popes,  has  exulted  in  orga- 
nizing the  Church,  in  maintaining  her  unity,  increasing  her 
strength  ;  and,  therefore,  for  the  temporal  crown  which 
he  has  lost  the  Church  of  God  sets  on  his  brow  the  triple 
crown  of  this  threefold  glory.  Therefore  let  us  remember 
that  he  is  our  father,  and  let  us  honor  and  praise  him. 
Let  us  pray  that  length  of  days  may  crown  his  head,  and 
that,  as  he  has  buried  so  many  of  his  enemies,  he  may  live 
to  triumph  over  those  who  remain — (applause) — not,  in- 
deed, to  seek  their  destniction,  but  to  take  them  back  into 
his  bosom.     Let  us  remember  him  as  Irishmen,  owing  our 


The  Grandeur  of  Pope  Pius  IX.  49 

Catholicity  to  the  Pope,  and  the  preservation  of  that 
divine  faith  to  the  strong  fidelity  with  which  Ireland  has 
always,  through  good  report  and  evil  report,  taken  her 
stand  by  the  chair  of  Peter  ;  and  let  us  all,  with  one 
heart  and  voice,  in  thankfulness  cry  out,  "God  bless  Pius 
IX.,  Pope  of  Rome ! "     (Loud  applause. ) 


"Follow  Thou  Me." 


Discourse  at  the  Funeral  Ceremonies  of  Pius  IX.  in  the 
Cathedral  at  Cor\  February  21,  1878. 

**  PoLLOW  thou  me  1 "  said  Jesus  to  Peter.  "  Follow  thou  Christ ! "  says  the 
Church  to  her  children.  How  can  we  follow  Christ  ?  In  the  funeral  ser- 
mon on  Pius  IX.  Father  Burke  shows  us  how  the  saintly  Pope  followed 
the  Master.  His  was  an  example  worthy  of  imitation.  Let  us  read  how 
he  overcame  momentous  difliculties,  how  his  joy  was  in  the  love  of  Jesus, 
and  how  his  glorious  victories  are  enjoyed  to-day.  Then  let  us  beseech 
our  Malier  for  grace  that  we  may  so  live  as  to  be  worthy  to  be  called 
"  sons  of  God  and  joint  heirs  of  Christ." 

father  Burke's  text  is  from  the  21st  chapter  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John : 

This  is  now  the  third  time  that  Jesus  was  manifested  to  His  disciples  after 
He  was  risen  from  the  dead. 

When,  therefore,  they  had  dined,  Jesus  saith  to  Simon  Peter  :  Simon,  son  of 
John,  lovest  thou  me  more  than  these  ?  lie  saith  to  Him :  Yea,  Lord, 
Thou  knowest  that  I  love  Thee.    He  saith  to  him:  Feed  my  lambs. 

He  saith  to  liim  again  :  Simon,  son  of  John,  lovest  thou  me  ?  He  saith  to 
Him:  Yea,  Lord,  thou  knowest  that  I  love  Thee.  He  saith  to  him  :  Feed 
my  lambs. 

He  saith  to  him  the  third  time  :  Simon,  son  of  John,  lovest  thou  me  ?  Peter 
was  grieved  because  He  said  to  him  the  third  time,  Lovest  thou  me  ? 
and  he  said  to  Him:  Lord,  Thou  knowest  all  things  ;  Thou  knowest  that  I 
love  Thee.    He  said  to  him  :  Feed  my  sheep. 

Amen,  amen,  I  say  to  thee,  when  thou  wast  younger  thou  didst  gird  thyself, 
and  didst  walk  whither  thou  wouldst.  But  when  thou  shalt  be  old 
thou  Shalt  stretch  forth  thy  hands,  and  another  shall  gird  thee  and  lead 
thee  whither  thou  wouldst  not. 

And  this  He  said,  signifying  by  what  death  Ho  should  glorify  God.  And 
when  He  had  said  this  He  saith  to  him  :  Follow  me. 

Peter,  turning  about,  saw  that  disciple  whom  Jesus  loved  following,  who 
also  leaned  on  his  breast  at  supper  and  said  :  Lord,  who  is  ho  that  shall 
betray  thee  P 

M 


**  FoLL  0  w  Tho  u  Me,  "  51 

Him,  therefore,  when  Peter  had  seen,  he  saith  to  Jesua :  Lord,  and  what 

shall  this  man  do? 
Jesus  saith  to  him  :  So  I  will  have  him  to  remain  till  I  come,  what  is  it  to 

thee  ?    Follow  thou  me. 

MAY  it  please  your  lordsliip.  Dearly  beloved  brethren, 
this  was  the  last  apparition  mentioned  by  the  Evan- 
gelist in  which  Christ  appeared  to  His  apostles.  They  were 
all  assembled  together,  James,  Andrew,  John,  Philip,  Bar- 
tholomew, and  others — they  were  all  there,  when  suddenly 
their  Divine  Master  flashed  into  their  presence  and  gave 
joy  to  their  eyes  as  they  beheld  Him,  and  to  their  hearts, 
for  they  loved  Him  dearly.  He  was  coming  to  say  His  last 
words,  for  He  in  a  few  hours  should  disappear  amid  the 
glorious  clouds  of  Olivet,  so  that  they  should  see  His  face 
on  earth  no  more.  He  was  now  come  to  say  His  last  words 
to  them — words  that  were  to  remain,  for  they  came  from 
the  lips  of  God  ;  words  which  were  to  remain  as  the  very 
charter  of  the  Church  which  He  founded  in  the  shedding 
of  His  adorable  blood.  And  He  called  out  of  the  twelve 
one  man,  Simon  Peter.  He  called  him  forth,  and  all  the 
others  looked  wondering  ;  and  the  Lord  spoke — oh  !  with 
what  awful  solemnity.  '*  Simon,"  He  said,  "  son  of  John, 
lovest  thou  me  more  than  these?"  There  were  all  the 
apostles,  and  among  them  one  apostle  whom  Jesus  loved 
— one  who  was  loved  so  as  to  be  worthy  of  receiving  from 
his  Master  on  Calvary  the  grandest  inheritance;  that  was, 
He  gave  him  the  custody  of  the  love  of  the  Virgin  Mother 
of  Jesus  Christ.  Surely  there  were  those  who  loved  Him 
dearly  and  well,  and  yet  He  says :  "Simon  Peter,  son  of 
John,  lovest  thou  me  even  more  than  these  love  me?" 
And  Peter  answered,  saying :  "  Lord,  Thou  knowest  that  I 
love  Thee."  There  was  a  pause.  Again  the  Son  of  God 
spoke,  again  the  same  terrible  question:  "Peter,  dost 
thou  love  me  more  than  any  other  man  on  earth  lovest 
me?"  And  Peter  fearlessly  answered:  "Thou  knowest 
that  I  love  Thee."  The  third  time  He  spoke  again  :  "Si- 
mon Peter,  son  of  John,  for  the  third  time  I  ask  fctee, 
dost  thou  love  me  more  than  other  men?"    And  Peter, 


53  ''Follow  Thou  Me:' 

appealing  to  tliat  Omniscience  that  sees  and  knows  all 
things,  appealing  to  Christ  as  his  Master,  to  the  God  from 
whom  no  secret  of  the  human  heart  can  be  for  a  moment 
concealed,  said :  "  Judge  for  Thyself.  Thou  knowest  that 
I  love  Thee."  Next  followed  the  great  commission.  Hav- 
ing thus  tested  His  apostle's  love,  He  went  on,  saying  to 
him,  "Peter,  feed  thou  my  lambs,  feed  my  sheep.  Be 
thou  pastor  not  only  of  my  people,  but  be  thou  my  pastor 
of  the  very  pastors  of  my  people,  the  ruler  of  rulers  of  the 
Church  of  God— thou  only,  Peter.  To  thee  I  give  the  keys 
of  the  kingdom  of  heaven ;  and  for  thee,  O  Simon  Peter  ! 
have  I  pmyed  that  thy  faith  may  never  fail,  that  thou 
mayest  confirm  and  strengthen  thy  brethren.  Thou  art  a 
rock.  Upon  this  rock  I  will  build  my  Church,  and  the 
gates  of  hell  shall  never  prevail  against  it."  Peter,  then, 
having  declared  his  love,  received  his  great  commission. 

One  word  more  remained  to  be  spoken  to  him,  and  that 
was  the  strange  and  mysterious  precept,  "Follow  thou 
me."  Peter,  turning  round  to  the  others,  looked  at  St. 
John,  anxious  to  know  what  he  was  to  do,  and  said  to  his 
Master:  "What  is  this  man  to  do?"  Christ,  turning  to 
him,  almost  rebukingly  says  :  "Let  the  others  remain  ;  let 
them  take  their  places.  Do  thou  follow  me,"  he  added 
again.  This  precept  to  follow  Christ  has  been  already 
given  to  all  men,  unto  those  who  are  to  bear  the  Christian 
name.  The  Son  of  God  had  already  said:  "If  any  man 
wishes  to  come  after  me,  let  him  deny  himself  and  take 
up  his  cross  and  follow  me."  Why,  therefore,  having 
given  the  precept  to  all  men,  why  does  he  renew  it  twice 
again  to  Peter  personally — why  does  he  make  that  precept 
individually  to  Peter,  as  distinguished  not  only  from  every 
other  man,  but  even  from  St.  John,  the  apostle  and  disci- 
ple of  love  ?  Because  Peter,  in  virtue  of  the  great  com- 
mission he  received,  was  called  on  to  follow  his  Master, 
even  in  the  highest  paths  of  universal  jurisdiction,  of  un- 
limited power  and  government,  and,  consequently,  also 
into  the  highest  paths  of  suffering.  Having  thus  spoken, 
our  Divine  Lord,  having  made  all  things  perfect  in  the  or- 


"  FoLL  0  w  Tho  u  Me.  "  53 

ganization  of  his  Church,  blessed  His  apostles,  and  He  was 
taken  away  from  them.  They  saw  Him  no  more  on  earth. 
Turning  to  them.  He  said,  "  See  me  in  Peter,"  and  they  did 
homage  to  Peter  as  the  vicar  and  viceroy  of  Jesus  Christ, 
the  true  invisible  Head  of  the  Church. 

Well,  dearly  beloved,  for  many  a  long  year  he  con- 
tinued in  his  triple  ofiice  of  love,  jurisdiction,  and  suffering. 
For  many  long  years  he  proved  his  love  for  his  Divine 
Master.  He  proved  his  solicitude  for  the  growing  Church 
that  was  already  spreading  on  every  side  under  his  firm 
hand,  and,  dying,  he  sealed  that  love,  and  showed  that  he 
had  not  forgotten  the  strange  precept,  "Follow  me." 
For,  many  years  after  the  ascension  of  our  Divine  Lord, 
there  came  a  morning  when  the  sun  rose  over  the  Alban 
hills  and  filled  the  imperial  city  of  Eome  with  its  morning 
light ;  and  in  that  morning  light  an  old  man  was  brought 
forth  from  out  the  deep  dungeon  depths  of  the  Mamertine 
prison,  crippled  with  deformity,  bowed  with  years,  long  a 
prisoner  for  the  sake  of  Him  whom  he  preached  and  whom 
he  loved.  He  is  led  forth  now  from  the  very  blackness  of 
the  dungeon  into  the  light  morning  air,  and  led  through 
the  streets  of  Pome,  two  men  preceding  bearing  a  great 
cross.  With  faltering,  aged  step  he  climbed  the  rugged 
sides  of  the  steep  Jerusalem,  and  there  the  aged  man  was 
stretched  out  and  nailed  to  the  cross.  Whilst  they  were 
nailing  him  to  the  cross  he  had  one  prayer  to  make  to 
them,  and  it  was:  '"Lift  me  up,  but  let  my  head  be 
towards  the  earth ;  for  I  am  not  worthy  to  die  like  Him 
whom  I  saw  crucified  on  the  hill  outside  Jerusalem." 
Peter,  aged,  bent,  and  led  a  prisoner  in  Rome,  crucified  in 
Pome,  tlius  proved  to  the  Church,  to  all  the  world,  to 
heaven  and  earth,  that  he  had  not  forgotten  the  precept  of 
Him  who  said  :    "Follow  thou  me." 

And  the  Church  of  God  mourned  for  Peter,  even  as 
the  children  of  Israel  mourned  in  the  plains  of  Moab  for 
the  great  lawgiver,  whom  God  had  mysteriously  buried  in 
the  high  mountain.  But  their  mourning  was  soon  changed 
into  joy  ;  for  as  Christ  appeared  in  Peter,  so  Peter  reap- 


64  "  Follow  Thou  Me." 

peared  in  Linus,  Linus  again  in  Cletus,  and  Cletus  again 
in  Clement ;  and  so  the  golden  chain,  unbroken  in  a  single 
link,  is  passed  down — that  chain  of  which  the  Church  in 
her  conclave  held  yesterday  forged  the  last  link,  whilst 
the  lirst  link  is  in  the  hand  of  Jesus  Christ,  seated  at 
the  right  hand  of  Almighty  God  in  heaven.  Two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  and  more  are  the  links  of  Jurisdiction  and 
glory  in  that  golden  and  apostolic  chair,  and  we,  children 
of  the  Church,  are  mourning  to-day.  Peter  has  died  again ; 
Peter,  once  again  imprisoned,  once  again  held  up  before  the 
eyes  of  the  world,  has  yielded  his  soul  upon  a  hill  in 
Rome.  His  great  and  glorious  soul  has  passed  away  to 
behold  in  heaven  that  triumph  of  the  Church  which  was 
denied  him  on  earth,  and  we,  his  children,  are  mourning  ; 
we  grieve  for  our  father,  even  though  this  very  morning 
Peter  has  risen  again,  and  our  sorrow  must  speedily  be 
changed  into  joy.  AVe  are  mourning  for  Pius  IX.  That 
glorious  roll  of  Peter's  successors  contains  the  names 
of  the  most  illustrious  names  that  were  born  to  man 
on  this  earth.  Martyrs  adorned  it  with  their  blood,  saints 
with  their  sanctity,  apostles  with  their  zeal.  It  is  embla- 
zoned forth  with  such  names  that  the  world  has  attached 
to  them  even  the  title  ''Great."  Leo  the  Great  is  there, 
who  saved  Rome  ;  Hildebrand,  the  immortal  St.  Gregory 
YII.,  is  there,  who,  dying,  having  conquered  all  the  world, 
said  to  his  people  :  "  Because  I  love  justice  and  hate  ini- 
quity, thus  I  die."  Boniface  VIII.,  crowned  with  suffer- 
ings and  adversity,  is  there,  and  his  name  is  written  in  let- 
ters of  gold.  There  was  Pius  V.,  the  aged  and  saintly 
pontiff  who,  from  his  chamber  in  the  Vatican,  command- 
ed the  elements  on  that  glorious  day  of  Lepanto  when  the 
cross  was  raised  up  and  the  enemies  of  God  scattered. 
Dearly  beloved,  among  these  names  there  is  not  one,  I 
venture  to  say,  of  which  history  will  pronounce  a  higher 
eulogium,  to  which  succeeding  generations  will  assign  a 
more  glorious  place,  than  the  illustrious  name  of  Pope  Pius 
IX.,  whose  loss  we  are  mourning  and  deploring  to-day. 
The  Church  of  God,  dearly  beloved,  is  divided  into 


**  Follow  Thou  Mb.^^  55 

three  great  portions.  There  is  the  Church  of  God  suffering 
in  the  expiating  punishment  of  purgatory  ;  there  is  the 
Church  of  God  struggling  and  lighting  against  all  the 
powers  of  darkness  and  the  world  here  on  earth  ;  and 
there  is  the  Church  of  God  triumphant  in  the  halls  of  the 
Most  High,  having  gained  her  crown  and  reigning  in  a 
peace  which  surpasses  the  comprehension  of  men.  If  the 
Church  here  on  earth  be  militant,  consequently  struggling, 
consequently  open  to  persecution,  fighting  day  after  day 
for  her  very  existence  and  for  the  souls  of  her  children,  al- 
though the  cup  of  adversity  may  be  brought  to  her  lips, 
and  though  she  may  be  commanded  to  drink  to  the  very 
dregs,  yet  the  Lord  can  ever  leave  His  Church  on  earth 
with  great  consolation  and  great  joy.  The  words  are  still 
true  of  her,  "My  mouth  shall  be  ever  filled  with  thy 
praise,  O  God ! ' '  She  always  gives  her  argument  and 
motive  for  gratitude  and  praise,  and  among  the  blessings, 
consolations,  and  joys  which  the  Almighty  God  gave  His 
afflicted  and  persecuted  Church  in  this  age,  the  greatest  of 
all  was  the  pontificate  of  Pius  IX. — the  proudest  when  we 
consider  the  character  of  the  man,  greatest  when  we  con- 
sider the  great  deeds  with  which  he  characterized  it,  great- 
est when  we  consider  the  mercy  which  prolonged  that  pon- 
tificate and  lengthened  the  days  even  beyond  the  years  of 
Peter  and  far  beyond  the  years  of  any  man  who  ever  suc- 
ceeded Peter  in  the  Church — prolonged  that  the  Church 
might  rejoice  under  his  powerful  arm  and  firm  guidance, 
and  that  our  joy  might  not  be  taken  away  too  soon. 

The  tests  by  which  we  can  measure  the  greatness  of  his 
character  are  the  three  tests  to  which  God  submitted  Peter. 
To  the  test,  "Do  you  love  me  more  than  any  other  man ? " 
Peter  answered,  "  Yes."  "  Wilt  thou  feed  my  lambs  and 
sheep,  wilt  thou  govern  my  Church  ? "  and  Peter  answered, 
"Yes."  And  to  the  question,  "Wilt  thou  follow  me?" 
Peter's  whole  life  and  death  answered  emphatically, 
"Yes."  Let  us  test  Pius  IX.  by  the  foregoing  crucial 
tests.  Did  he  love  Jesus  Christ  more  than  any  other  man  % 
In  order  to  answer  this  question  I  will  ask  you  to  remem- 


te  '' Follow  Thou  Me." 

ber  that  among  the  strange  and  wonderful  graces  that  at- 
tended the  pontificate  of  Pius  IX.,  one  of  the  most  singu- 
lar was  the  rise,  the  sudden  and  universal  spread,  of  the 
devotion  to  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus.  The  apostle  of  this 
devotion,  the  humble  nun,  Mary  Margaret  Alacoque,  was 
beatified  by  Pius  IX.,  and  devotion  to  the  Sacred  Heart  of 
our  Lord  was  spread  by  her.  It  went  forth  from  his  own 
heart  in  his  encyclicals,  in  his  apostolic  briefs,  in  the  num- 
ber of  indulgences  which  were  attached  to  the  devotion. 
He  fostered,  cherished,  and  spread  this  great  devotion, 
and  it  is  by  this  I  will  measure  his  love  for  Jesus  Christ. 
Was  his  heart  conformed  to  the  Sacred  Heart  of  his  Divine 
Master  ?  If  we  look  into  the  Sacred  Heart  of  our  Lord  and 
Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  we  find  in  that  abyss  of  divine  per- 
fection, in  that  indescribable  furnace  of  divine  love,  we 
find  certain  loves,  certain  convictions  that  stand  out  pre- 
eminently, and  these  were  particularly  His  love  for  His 
Eternal  Father,  His  love  for  Mary  His  Mother,  His  love  for 
little  children.  His  love  for  the  poor  and  the  penitent,  and 
His  love  for  His  Church.  In  all  these  our  Divine  Lord  con- 
descended to  give  us  a  bright  example  in  His  life  and  say- 
ings. There  was  in  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus  an  infinite 
love  for  the  Heavenly  Father. 

How  did  He  show  this  1  By  the  spirit  of  prayer  that 
was  upon  Him,  for  wherever  there  is  love  there  is  a  natural 
prompting  to  have  intercourse  with  the  object  of  our  love 
and  to  be  near  him.  Intercourse  with  God  is  through 
prayer,  and  therefore  Christ  was  emphatically  a  man  of 
prayer.  He  spent  the  night  on  the  mountain-side  in  prayer 
with  God.  He  prayed  at  aU  times  and  ever  communed 
with  His  Heavenly  Father.  It  was  by  prayer  He  strength- 
ened Himself  to  meet  the  horrors  of  His  passion — nay, 
when  that  prayer  brought  with  it  the  agony  of  Gethsemane, 
He  but  prayed  the  longer,  wrestling  with  the  awful  suf- 
ferings that  were  coming  upon  Him.  Pius  IX.  conformed 
with  the  heart  of  Jesus  in  this — he  was  pre-eminently  a 
man  of  prayer.  I  had  the  happiness  to  live  some  years 
■under  the  light  of  his  great  example,  to  behold  him  day 


*' Follow  Thou  Me.*'  57 

after  day,  but  never  have  I,  under  any  circumstances,  be- 
held the  Sovereign  Pontiff  that  he  did  not  seem  absorbed 
in  communion  with  God.  But,  oh !  when  he  came  into 
any  of  the  churches  in  Rome  and  knelt  in  the  presence  of 
our  Lord,  present  in  the  tabernacle  of  the  Blessed  Sacra- 
ment, then  without  a  moment's  apparent  preliminary  pre- 
paration, then  without  a  moment's  hesitation,  as  if  pursu- 
ing the  natural,  habitual  course  of  his  thoughts,  the  whole 
man  seemed  to  go  out  from  him,  and  the  spirit  of  prayer 
which  absorbed  him  seemed  to  go  altogether  into  the  taber- 
nacle wherein  was  God  whom  he  adored.  The  very  sight 
seemed  to  lead  his  eye  as  it  went  forth  to  behold — in  the 
strong  vision  of  faith — Jesus  Christ.  His  prayers  so  ab- 
sorbed him  that  age,  infirmity,  everything  was  forgotten, 
and  the  very  sight  of  him  at  prayer  has  more  than  once 
moved  those  who  do  not  believe  in  the  presence  of  the 
Lord  to  kneel  down  from  very  fear  ;  for  they  realized  that 
God  must  be  near  the  man  who  thus  prayed.  Second  to 
the  love  of  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus  was  love  for  Mary, 
His  Mother.  Who  can  doubt  it?  When  He  was  about 
working  His  first  miracle  at  the  wedding  of  Cana,  at  Gali- 
lee, He  expressly  declared  to  His  Virgin  Mother  that  His 
time  was  not  come,  that  the  moment  had  not  arrived  when. 
He  should  show  His  omnipotence  by  working  miracles. 
But  Mary  pressed  Him,  with  the  calm  consciousness  that 
she  could  almost  command,  and  He  told  them  to  fill  the 
vessels  with  water.  Then  He,  turning,  looked,  and  the 
water  flashed  into  wine  at  the  sight  of  God.  Why  did  He 
do  this  \  Why  did  He  anticipate  the  time  ?  Why  did  He 
work  it  after  expressly  declaring  that  His  time  was  not  yet 
come  ?  Because  it  was  Mary's  wish.  It  was  to  honor  her, 
it  was  to  give  her  pleasure,  to  let  the  whole  world  see  that 
He  would  do  great  things  in  and  for  Mary.  When  He  was 
dying  on  the  cross,  torn  from  head  to  foot  with  scourges, 
with  seventy-three  cruel  thorns  deeply  imbedded  in  His 
aching  head,  when  the  film  of  death  was  in  His  eyes,  when 
the  thirst  of  death  was  on  His  lips,  and  when  the  agony  of 
•  death  broke  and  rent  his  heart,  even  then  He  forgot  him- 


58  *' Follow  Thou  Me."* 

self  and  His  own  sorrows.  He  looked  lovingly  to  Mary  and 
called  the  apostle  to  him  He  loved  best,  saying  to  him : 
"  O  my  son  1  behold  my  Mother  ;  take  cure  of  her." 

And  even  as  his  Divine  Master  was,  so  was  Pins 
IX.  Tender,  pure  love  of  the  Mary  of  purity,  the 
^Mother  of  God,  he  drew  in  his  devotion  of  hfer  in  his 
mother's  milk.  He  states  in  his  bull  of  her  Immaculate 
Conception  that  he  rejoiced  in  his  old  age  when  the  holy 
choir  of  God  and  all  the  bishops  called  upon  him  to  define 
the  great  dogma  and  declare  dogmatically  that  which  the 
Church  always  knew,  always  felt  and  believed — namely,  as 
St.  Augustine  said,  that  when  it  was  a  question  of  sin  there 
should  be  no  mention  of  the  name  of  Mary.  Her  name 
was  not  to  be  on  the  lips  of  those  who  discoursed  of  sin. 
"In  my  old  age,"  said  he,  "let  me  rejoice,  for  from  my 
earliest  childhood  I  have  loved  my  Mother  Mary."  To 
him  was  reserved  the  crowning  glory  to  set  upon  her  head 
the  brightest  gem — namely,  to  proclaim  unto  heaven  that 
knew  it,  and  to  earth  that  already  believed,  the  eternal 
truth  that  Mary  was  conceived  without  sin,  that  the  merits 
of  the  Saviour  were  extended  to  her  by  anticipation,  that 
she  was  purified  by  prevention,  and  that  sin  was  not  atoned 
for  in  her  soul. 

The  third  love  of  Jesus  Christ  was  the  love  of  little  chil- 
dren. He  took  them  to  His  breast,  clasped  them  to  His 
bosom,  and  gave  them  His  love.  Even  so  the  heart  of  Pius 
IX.  loved  little  children.  When  he  was  ordained  priest  in 
1827,  and  other  men  engaged  in  preaching  the  Gospel 
either  meant  to  go  forth  in  a  mission  to  foreign  lands  or 
devote  themselves  to  an  ecclesiastical  career  likely  to  lead 
up  to  the  high  places  in  the  Church,  the  young  priest^ 
John  Mastai  Ferretti,  on  the  day  of  his  ordination  went 
into  an  orphanage  in  Rome,  took  a  little  room  in  the  place, 
sat  down  with  the  children  to  teach  them,  to  take  care  of 
them,  to  collect  money  for  their  maintenance — in  a  word, 
to  labor  for  them  and  to  be  their  servant.  And  for  seven 
years  he  there  remained,  intending  to  devote  his  whole  life 
in  the  cause  of  little  children,  until  the  hand  of  God  and 


" Follow  Thou  Me."  69 

the  voice  of  the  Church  came  and  drew  him  forth  for 
hio-her  things.  When  he  was  consecrated  Archbishop  of 
Spoleto,  and  took  possession  of  the  archiepiscopal  see,  his 
very  first  act  was  to  build  an  orphanage  for  little  children 
quite  near  to  his  own  palace,  that  he  might  see  them  and 
exercise  supervision  over  them  daily.  Translated  again 
from  Spoleto  to  Imola,  his  first  act  was  to  build  two 
orphanages,  one  on  each  side  of  his  palace,  for  the  little 
children.  But  he  did  more  :  he  built  asylums  for  the  fall- 
en, refuges  where  penitents  might  be  sanctified  until  holi- 
ness might  return  slowly  but  surely  to  those  who  had  fall- 
en. Thus  was  the  heart  of  this  man  conformed  to  the  very 
love  of  his  Saviour' s  heart. 

The  fourth  great  love  of  the  heart  of  Jesus  was  His 
Church,  my  dearly  beloved.  Oh  !  how  great  and  wonder- 
ful a  mystery  is  this  Holy  Catholic  Church  of  Jesus  Christ. 
A  great  and  wonderful  mystery.  For  the  four  thousand 
years  that  went  before  the  coming  of  the  Son  of  God  all 
things  prefigured  and  foreshadowed  the  Church  that  was 
to  be  in  the  fulness  of  time  and  the  perfection  of  grace. 
When  the  time  came  to  found  that  Church  the  Eternal  God 
came  down  from  heaven,  bringing  with  Him  His  own  essen- 
tial and  eternal  truth,  and  He  left  that  truth,  never  to  be 
sullied  by  the  slightest  error  in  her  teaching,  never  to  be 
contradicted  by  a  single  principle  of  her  moral  law — he  left 
that  truth  in  His  Church.  "I  will  send  my  Spirit  upon 
you  to  teach  you  all  truth,  to  keep  you  in  the  truth,  and  I 
myself  am  with  you  all  days,  even  to  the  consummation  of 
the  world." 

That  He  might  make  that  Church  all  beautiful,  all  holy, 
all  perfect  in  her  organization,  perfect  in  her  doctrine,  per- 
fect in  her  graces.  He  shed  His  blood  upon  the  cross.  Here 
are  the  words  of  the  apostle :  "  Christ  loved  His  Church 
and  gave  Himself  for  her,  that  He  might  present  her  to  Him- 
self not  having  spot  or  wrinkle  or  any  such  thing,  but  all 
perfect,  all  fair,  all  beautiful,  and  worthy  to  be  the  spouse 
of  the  Eternal  Lamb  of  God."  Such  was  the  love  that 
Jesus  Christ  had  for  His  Church  that  He  died  upon  the 


60  "  Follow  Thou  Me.'' 

cross  for  her  ;  such  is  the  abiding  love  that  He  has  for  her 
that  not  for  one  instant  has  He  ever  forsaken  her,  or  left 
her  open  to  the  imputation  of  a  single  error  in  her  faith  or 
in  her  morality.  And  even  so  did  the  heart  of  Pius  IX. 
love  the  Church.  She  was  his  one  care.  In  the  day  of 
his  ordination  as  a  priest  he  brought  a  virgin  heart  and 
virgin  hands  into  the  sanctuary  of  his  God,  and  that  sanc- 
tuary which  he  entered  as  a  virgin  he  left  as  a  virgin,  to 
take  hold  of  a  virgin's  crown  in  the  halls  of  God  Almighty. 
He  loved  the  Church.  The  Church,  no  matter  where  she 
was  in  suffering,  found  in  him  her  great  defender  and 
champion ;  the  Church,  wherever  she  was  in  difficulty,  felt 
the  touch  of  that  firm  and  steady  hand  that  was  at  the 
helm  of  the  bark  of  Peter,  that  guided  her  \vith  persistent 
wisdom,  that  brought  her  through  so  many  storms,  and  left 
her  perhaps  in  the  most  glorious  unity,  fidelity,  and  disci- 
pline to  which  ever  this  Church  of  God  has  attained  on 
earth  since  the  days  of  its  foundation.  Dying  in  the 
halls  of  the  Yatican,  with  the  rattle  of  death  in  his  throat, 
when  the  hand  of  death  had  seized  upon  him,  among  the 
last  words  spoken  to  the  cardinals  and  prelates  around  him 
were,  "  Guard  the  Church  that  I  loved  so  well ! "  It  was 
his  love  for  the  Church  that  sustained  him,  it  was  his  love 
for  the  Church  that  enabled  him  to  outlive  the  years  of 
Peter,  it  was  his  love  for  the  Church  that  enabled  him,  even 
in  his  old  age,  to  endure  imprisonment  and  misery  and 
heart-breaking  persecution  ;  it  was  the  same  Jove  that  up- 
held him  and  that  sustained  him  that  upheld  the  Virgin 
Mother  at  the  foot  of  the  cross,  when  any  other  mother 
would  have  died  long  before  at  witnessing  the  sufferings  of 
her  Son  and  her  God.  Therefore  I  hold  that  this  great 
man's  heart- was  conformed  to  the  heart  of  Jesus  Christ; 
and  that  in  the  day  when  the  Lord  raised  him,  an  humble 
and  almost  unknown  cardinal  as  he  was,  to  the  supreme 
dignity  of  the  Papacy,  in  that  day  God  surely  said:  "I 
have  found  David  my  servant  a  man  after  my  own  heart, 
and  with  my  holy  oil  I  have  anointed  him." 

But,  dearly  beloved,  beautiful  as  was  this  character,  the 


^' Follow  Thou  Me."  61 

personal  character  of  Pius  IX.,  beautiful  in  liis  love  for 
Uod,  his  love  for  the  Mother  of  God,  his  love  for  the  little 
ones,  his  love  for  the  penitent  and  the  aJ9Blicted,  and  the 
large  attribute  of  mercy  that  was  upon  him — for  lie  began 
his  pontificate  by  opening  prisons  on  earth,  and  he  closed 
his  pontilicate  by  using  the  key  that  he  alone  could  wield, 
and,  let  us  hope,  opening  the  gates  of  heaven  at  the  last 
cry  of  his  persecutor,  to  the  man  who  had  tal?en  from  him 
house  and  home,  and  who  turned  from  his  death-bed  in 
the  Quirinal  to  the  death-bed  in  the  Vatican  and  cried, 
"O  my  Lord!    remember  me"— beautiful  as  all  this  is, 
there  is  another  great  question  which  we  must  ask  our- 
selves, and  by  which  we  must  test  the  character  of  Pius 
IX.— namely,  did  he  administer  in  the  mighty  office  that 
God  had  given  him  as  Christ  demanded  that  Peter  should 
administer  the  Church  of  God?     "Feed  my  lambs,  feed 
my  sheep,"  He  said.     The  food  is  doctrine.     "  Thou  art  the 
rock  upon  which  I  will  build  my  Church."    The  rock  means 
firmness  that  never  would  yield  to  any  persecution,  never 
be  shaken  by  any  storm,  never  compromise  that  faith  in 
any  shape  or  form  whatsoever.     Did  Pius  IX.  do  this? 
0  my  beloved  brethren  !  when  we  come  to  consider  him 
no  longer  merely  as  a  man  but  as  a  Pope,  we  are  simply 
astounded  and  crushed.     Our  very  minds  within  us  labor, 
and  labor  ineffectually,  to  conceive  how  great  and  terrible 
is  that  office  to  which  a  man  is  exalted  when  he  is  made 
the  head  of  the  Catholic  Church !     How  terrible  it  is  I 
What  an  awful  thing  it  is  to  think  that  a  man  is  made  the 
viceroy,  the  vicar,  the  representative  of  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ ;  that  he  receives  all  power,  because  the  Son  of  God 
said,  "  All  power  in  heaven  and  on  earth  is  given  to  me, 
and  even  as  the  Father  sent  me  I  send  you  "  ;  that  there  is 
no  limit  to  his  jurisdiction  ;  that  he  can  touch  the  Church, 
not  only  hei:e  on  earth  in  every  one  of  its  members — that 
every  bishop  that  grasps  his  crosier,  every  priest  that  lifts 
his  hands,  must  do  so  under  the  sanction  and  with  the 
knowledge  of  the  pope,  or  else  his  acts  are  sinful,  if  not 
null  and  void — but  that  also  his  power  passes  into  the 


62  "  FoLL  0  w  Tho  u  Me.  " 

kingdom  of  glory  by  the  act  of  canonization,  and  into 
purgatory  by  the  power  of  indulgences !  When  we  con- 
sider that  all  tliis  is  involved  in  the  idea  of  the  Papacy,  is 
it  not  a  terrible  responsibility  ? 

Every  other  office  ever  conferred  upon  man  shrinks  into 
utter  smallness,  shrinks  away  into  almost  nothingness,  com- 
pared with  the  awful  dignity  and  jurisdiction  of  the  office 
of  the  Papacy.  Moses  was  raised  by  the  Almighty  God 
to  be  a  lawgiver  to  the  people,  and  the  Scripture  says  of 
him  that  the  Lord  God  made  him  like  the  saints  in  glorj'-, 
magnified  him  in  the  fear  of  his  enemies,  sanctified  him  in 
faith  and  meekness,  crowned  him  with  honor  and  glory  ; 
and  yet  what  was  Moses' s  office  compared  with  that  of  the 
pope  \  He  was  the  legislator  for  a  particular  people,  the 
Jews ;  the  pope  is  the  legislator  for  the  whole  world. 
Moses  administered  the  law  of  which  the  apostle  speaks 
as  "  Poor  miserable  elements,  that  never  brought  anything 
to  perfection"  ;  the  pope  administers  with  supreme  power 
the  perfect  law  of  Jesus  Christ.  Aaron,  again,  was  raised 
up  to  the  priesthood  of  the  nation,  and,  says  Ecclesiasti- 
cus,  "the  Lord  God  crowned  him  with  honor,  and  gave 
him  a  golden  cincture,  and  made  with  him  an  everlasting 
covenant  for  the  priesthood."  But  what  was  that  priest- 
hood compared  with  the  pope' s  ?  It  was  but  a  shadow,  an 
umbra,  a  promise  which  was  to  bo  fulfilled  in  the  new  law 
according  to  the  order  of  Melchisedech.  He  was  conse- 
crated, but  he  only  offered  in  sacrifice  the  blood  of  the  fat- 
lings  of  the  flock  ;  the  Pope  of  Rome  offers  in  sacrifice  and 
sheds  mystically  the  divine  blood  of  Jesus  Christ  at  Mass. 
And  great  was  his  office — great  in  its  authority,  great  in 
its  unlimited  jurisdiction,  great  in  its  extent  over  all  men. 
Pius  IX.  was  a  living  instance  of  the  truth  of  the  theologi- 
cal principle  that  when  Almighty  God  destines  a  man  for 
any  office  or  any  function,  no  matter  how  high,  He  gives 
him  graces  necessary  to  fit  him  for  it.  Thus  Mary,  the 
Mother  of  God,  according  to  St.  Thomas,  received  such 
grace  that  she  was  fit  to  be  the  Mother  of  God. 

He  was  called  to  his  mighty  task.    He  is  gone  ;  he  has 


*' Follow  Thou  Me."  63 

left  behind  Mm  an  imperishable  name  and  a  perishable 
body ;  but  his  soul,  with  all  its  responsibilities,  is  gone 
before  the  judgment-seat  of  the  Lord  to  give  an  account  of 
the  longest  pontificate  that  God  ever  gave  to  His  Church, 
lie  is  gone  to  render  that  account,  and  I  say  that  when  we 
lookback  upon  his  administration  of  the  Church  of  God 
we  cannot  but  conclude  that  that  account  was  favorable, 
and  has  been  received  by  the  invisible  Head  of  the  Church 
as  worthy  of  the  pontificate  of  the  Church  and  of  heaven. 
Never,  dearly  beloved,  and  it  is  a  remarkable  fact, 
never  in  the  history  of  the  Church  was  she  so  persecuted 
as  during  the  pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  Secondly,  never 
was  she  so  united  as  during  the  pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  ; 
never  was  she  so  extended  over  the  earth  as  during  his 
pontificate  ;  never  was  she  so  persecuted.  There  are  many 
forms  of  persecution.  There  is  the  persecution  of  the 
sword  ;  and  God,  when  He  allows  the  sword  to  fall  on  His 
Church,  pours  out  a  pentecost  of  graces ;  priests  and  people 
sanctify  their  faith  by  becoming  martyrs.  Such  was  the 
case  with  Ireland.  Three  hundred  years  ago  hell  and  earth 
demanded  the  blood  of  the  Irish  people,  and  the  Irish  people 
willingly  lost  their  blood  and  became  martyrs  for  God  and 
His  Church.  But  among  other  forms  of  persecution  there 
is  the  persecution  which,  by  legislation,  tries  to  limit  the 
legitimate  action  of  the  Church,  tries  to  take  away  from 
her  her  just  and  necessary  influence  over  the  education  of 
her  children,  tries  to  interfere  with  the  j  urisdiction  of  her 
bishops,  makes  war  upon  the  necessary  immunities  and 
privileges  of  her  sanctuaries  ;  even  of  persecution  that  tells 
a  lie,  and  then  tells  the  Church  that  she  must  not  answer 
it  by  telling  the  truth.  Even  such  is  the  persecution  of 
our  day.  It  is  the  persecution  of  law,  laws  made  here 
and  there,  one  law  declaring  that  the  clergy  are  no  longer 
exempt  from  service  in  the  army,  dragging  the  priest  from 
the  altar  and  the  monk  from  his  convent,  and  putting 
them  into  the  ranks  of  the  soldiery  to  shed  blood — which 
is  so  abhorrent  to  anointed  hands — and  the  law  telling 
bishops  that  they  must  have  no  intercourse  with  the  Pope 


64  *'  FoLLO  w  Tho V  Me. " 

of  Rome,  that  they  must  not  write  to  him,  that  they  must 
not  instruct  their  people,  or  publish  a  pastoral  without 
first  submitting  it  to  the  inspection  of  an  official  who,  per- 
haps, is  an  iniidel ;  laws  secularizing  the  education  of  chil- 
dren and  handing  it  over  to  men  who  avowedly  profess 
that  they  do  not  believe  in  the  existence  of  God.  Such 
persecution  has  been  by  every  agency  of  the  world's  power 
directed  in  an  especial  manner  against  the  Catholic  Church. 

Never  was  she  so  united,  never  were  the  episcopate  and 
clergy  so  obedient  to  their  head,  never  was  order  so  per- 
fectly established  witliin  her,  never  was  the  spirit  of  reli- 
gious discipline  so  largely  extended  among  all  orders  in 
the  Church  of  God  ;  it  has  been  a  revival ;  it  has  been  as 
if  another  pentecost  of  grace,  as  if  union,  piety,  and  order, 
had  been  flung  forth  from  the  hands  of  Pius  IX. 

Never  was  the  Church  so  extended.  To-day  hierar- 
chies have  been  established  in  several  parts  of  the  world 
of  the  existence  of  which  former  popes  were  unaware — 
in  North  America,  in  distant  Oceanica,  in  persecuting 
England,  in  Scotland,  everywhere  through  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  earth.  This  is  owing  to  the  labois  of 
Pius  IX.,  who  transfused  his  energetic  spirit  to  bishops, 
priests,  and  people  alike,  and  who  has  gone  down  to  his 
grave,  forth  to  his  crown,  leaving  the  Church  of  God,  even 
if  most  i)ersecuted,  in  a  more  perfect  form  of  discipline  and 
union  than  she  ever  attained  to  before. 

What  shall  we  say  of  liis  feeding  the  lambs  and  the 
sheep  %  One  thing,  my  dearly  beloved,  as  Catholics  know, 
he  has  done.  And  if  there  be  one  to-day  here  who  does 
not  know  it,  even  to  him  I  say  that  he  must  recognize  the 
fact  that  if  God  has  spoken,  if  God  has  revealed  any  truth 
to  men,  that  truth  must  come  by  the  voice  of  authority  ; 
that  truth  must  be  made  known  by  a  living  voic« ;  that 
truth  must  be  guaranteed  from  all  error ;  that  truth  must 
be  taught  clearly,  emphatically,  in  every  language,  if  the 
belief  in  that  truth  be  necessary  to  faith,  and  if  it  be  true 
that  without  faith  it  is  impossible  to  please  God  or  save  our 
souls.    What  is  called  dogma,  therefore— that  is  to  say, 


* '  FoLL  0  w  Who  u  Me.  "  65 

tlie  solemn  attestation  of  tlie  infallible  voice  to  the  message 
of  God — tliis  telling  of  the  truth  and  preaching  it,  is  abso- 
lutely necessary  for  mankind,  and  it  is  the  greatest  bless- 
ing that  we  have.  Now,  twice  during  his  long  pontificate 
did  Pius  IX.  proclaim  the  revealed  truth  as  the  guided 
witness  of  that  truth.  The  first  proclamation  was  in  1854, 
when  he  defined  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Blessed 
Virgin  Mary  ;  the  second  in  1870,  when  he  defined  and  de- 
clared that  the  Pope  of  Rome,  the  visible  head  of  the  Ca- 
tholic Church,  when  he  speaks  as  pope,  solemnly  and  to 
the  universal  Church,  is  infallible  under  the  guiding  hand 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  of  God.  These  two  dogmatic  utterances 
mark  the  pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  I  ask  you  to  consider 
them  both,  for  out  of  these  two  utterances  we  gather  the 
great  mind,  the  far-seeing  thought,  the  anticipative  wisdom 
of  this  mighty  man  to  whom  God  confided  for  so  many 
years  the  government  of  His  Church. 

Dearly  beloved,  the  Church  of  God,  from  the  day  of  the 
Council  of  Jerusalem  down  to  the  Council  of  the  Vatican, 
has  spoken  from  time  to  time,  always  with  unerring  voice, 
always  in  clear  language,  bearing  testimony  to  the  faith ; 
but  her  definitions,  although  most  important,  only  touched 
certain  principles  and  certain  facts.  Thus,  for  instance, 
the  Council  of  Nice  declared  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ, 
which  the  Arians  contested ;  the  Council  of  Ephesus  de- 
clared that  the  Blessed  Virgin  was  truly  the  Mother  of 
God,  which  the  Nestorians  denied  ;  the  Council  of  Trent 
declared  the  presence  and  the  manner  of  the  presence  of 
our  Divine  Lord  in  the  Holy  Eucharist,  which  the  heresies 
of  that  day  denied.  But  all  those  definitions  of  truth,  aU 
those  dogmatic  utterances,  presuppose  one  truth,  they  all 
take  for  granted  one  great  truth  which  was  in  the  mind 
and  heart  of  all,  yet  which  had  never  been  dogmatically 
defined — namely,  that  there  was  a  living,  teaching,  infalli- 
ble voice  in  the  Church  of  God,  and  that  was  the  voice  of 
Peter  and  Peter's  successors.  How  do  I  prove  this? 
Every  council  of  bishops  that  ever  gathered  together  in  the 
Catholic  Church,  first  of  all  before  they  dared  venture  to 


66  ** Follow  Thou  Me:* 

say  a  single  word  on  faith,   the  first  thing  asked  was : 
''  Where  is  Peter  «"     Where  is  the  pope  ?    And  until  the 
pope  appeared  personally  or  by  accredited  legates  no  man 
ever  dared  to  touch  upon  faith ;  and  when  definitions  or 
dogmas  were  agreed  upon  no  bishop  ever  dreamed  of  pub- 
lishing them  to  his  people  or  his  diocese  until  the  hand  of 
the  pope  had  first  rested  upon  them  and  the  voice  of  the 
pope  had  declared:  "This  is  the  truth."    So  we  see  that 
the  Church  by  her  councils,  definitions,  and  dogmatic  ut- 
terances always  took  for  granted  this  great  truth,  and 
this  is  the  fundamental  truth  which  explains  all  the  rest. 
For  unless  we  admit  this  we  cannot  see  what  right  the 
Church,  at  Nice,  had  to  define  the  divinity  of  the  Son  of 
God,  or,  at  Trent,  to  define  tran substantiation.    Now,  to 
Pius  IX.  was  reserved  the  mighty  glory  of  bringing  forth 
this  fundamental  truth,  of  placing  it  upon  the   imperish- 
able, eternal  basis  of  dogma,  of  defining  and  declaring  it 
clearly  to  all  men.     That  one  dogmatic  definition  clears 
away  all  difficulties  and  all  the  mist  that  might  hang 
over  other  previous  definitions  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
Behold  the  mind  of  the  man  !     It  is  not  merely  an  indi- 
vidual fact,  it  is  a  dogma  affecting  all  other  dogmas,  sus- 
taining aU  other  dogmas  ;  it  is  an  explanation  of  every- 
thing mysterious  in  the  Church  of  God,  that  in  a  fleeting, 
a  fading,  and  a  changing  world  shall  remain  indefectible, 
incorruptible,  unchangeable,  the  Word  on  her  lips  ever  the 
same,  and  that  most  assuredly  the  Divine  Word  and  the 
truth  of  Jesus  Chiist. 

The  other  definition,  that  of  the  Immaculate  Concep- 
tion, is  also  a  revelation  of  the  great  mind  of  that  Pontiff, 
dearly  beloved.  If  the  Church  of  God  is  a  great  mystery, 
she  alone  is  truthful  where  all  others  are  liable  to  error, 
she  alone  is  unchanged  where  all  around  her  is  changing, 
she  alone  is  indestructible  and  eternal  where  all  around 
her  is  dying  or  dead.  If,  I  say,  the  Church  of  God  is  a 
great  mystery,  so  in  all  those  things  is  Mary,  the  Mother 
of  Jesus  Christ,  a  great  mystery,  the  centre  around  which 
revolve  strange,  mysterious  things.    0  my  dearly  beloved  I 


"Follow  Thou  Me."  67 

wliat  a  mysterious  thing  it  is  to  think  that  a  woman 
should  be  a  mother  and  yet  remain  the  purest  of  virgins, 
fit  to  be  the  virgins'  queen  and  the  angels'  queen  in 
heaven.  To  think  that  she  should  remain  a  virgin  and  be 
yet  as  truly  mother  as  ever  suclded  babe  on  her  breast ! 
What  a  strange,  mysterious  thing  it  is  that  a  child  of 
earth,  a  child  of  Adam,  should  be  Mother  of  God,  the 
Mother  of  the  eternal  God,  who  came  down  from  heaven, 
and,  entering  into  her  immaculate  bosom,  took  upon  Him- 
self her  virgin  blood  and  flesh,  receiving  in  Mary  and  from 
Mary  a  human  body  and  a  human  soul ;  for  Jesus  Christ, 
though  in  nature  human  and  divine,  is  still  but  one  in 
person,  and  the  very  flesh  and  blood  that  He  took  from 
Mary  is  adored  by  all  the  angels  in  heaven,  and  shall  be 
for  eternity.  Was  it  not  a  strange  thing,  also,  that  Mary's 
body  should  have  been  taken  up  into  heaven  without 
undergoing  the  corruption  consequent  upon  death,  that  in 
her  the  glorious  resurrection  which  we  all  hope  for  should 
be  anticipated  ?  This  for  a  time  was  an  unexplained  mys- 
tery, until  Pius  IX.  declared  her  immaculate,  and  this  ex- 
plains all.  Her  virginal  soul  was  never  tainted  or  sullied  by 
sin,  and  why,  therefore,  should  she  suffer  corruption  when 
it  is  written,  "O  Lord  !  thou  wilt  not  have  given  thy  holy 
one  to  see  corruption"?  In  the  same  way  is  it  that  the 
dogma  of  infallibility  explains  all  the  mysteries  which  sur- 
round the  Church  of  God. 

How  great,  then,  was  the  man !  how  great  was  the  wis- 
dom that  to  remedy  the  evils  of  an  incredulous  age  placed 
the  sacred  interests  of  the  Church  of  Christ  on  the  magnifi- 
cent dogmatic  basis  of  the  infallibility  of  His  vicar  and  the 
Immaculate  Conception  of  His  blessed  Mother !  This  work 
of  the  great  Pontiff  Pius  IX.  was  the  rock  that  upheld 
the  Church  of  God.  Where  was  the  hand  of  the  perse- 
cutor raised  to  strike  a  blow  at  the  Church  that  did  not 
fall  on  the  sacred  person  of  Pius  IX.  ?  Where  was  there 
ever  a  voice  raised  against  her  that  the  aged  man  in  Rome 
did  not  answer  the  challenge,  speak  out  the  truth,  and  de- 
stroy error  with  that  terrible  courage  which  was  for  us  the 


^  * '  FoLL  0  w  Tno  u  Me.  " 

grandest  feature  of  liis  character  ?  ^Vlien  the  whole  world 
would  fain  draw  him  into  some  error,  back  from  the  rock  of 
Peter  came  the  word,  I^on  possumus.  ''  I  defy  the  whole 
world,"  he  said.  "If  I  had  a  thousand  lives  I  could  lose 
them ;  but  one  thing  I  cannot  do,  and  that  is  to  sacrifice 
the  true  interests  of  the  Church  of  God."  Such  was  the 
heart  and  the  soul  that  had  to  be  tried  by  the  three  tests 
to  which  Christ  submitted  Peter.  It  was  no  flowery  path 
that  Christ  pointed  to  when  He  commanded  Peter  ''to 
follow  me."  It  was  a  path,  indeed,  of  the  highest  juris- 
diction, the  highest  glory,  but  it  was  also  a  path  of  suffer- 
ing, a  mountain  path,  strewn  with  thorns.  The  heart  of 
Pius  IX.  was  as  tender  for  the  poor  as  the  heart  of  a 
mother  for  her  child.  I  have  often  seen  him  when  the 
poor  and  the  afflicted  crossed  his  path  descend  from  his 
carriage  and  listen  to  the  tale  of  some  miserable  creature, 
and  as  his  purse  gave  bounty  his  eyes  gave  tears  of  pain. 
Yet  that  tender  heart  suffered  the  most  acute  pain — 
namely,  that  of  ingratitude.  The  first  of  his  acts  was  to 
open  the  prisons  and  recall  the  exiles,  but  their  first  act 
was  to  raise  the  hands  he  had  emancipated  against  him, 
and  to  drive  him  forth  into  exile  vrith  curses  and 
maledictions. 

Even  as  Mary  at  the  foot  of  the  cross  felt  the  tortures 
of  her  Divine  Son  more  acutely  than  if  she  herself  suffered 
them,  so  Pius  IX.  felt  the  indignities  heaped  upon  his 
Church  more  than  any  personal  wrong.  In  every  cardinal 
deprived  of  his  dignity  he  felt  humiliated ;  in  every 
oppressed  priest  he  felt  oppressed.  Like  Peter  in  the 
Mamertine  prison,  he  languished  in  the  Vatican,  seeing  the 
series  of  persecutions  to  which  his  Church  was  subjected. 
But  at  last  he  was  taken  away,  after  many  years  of  suffer- 
ings, to  his  Father  in  heaven.  For  this  tlie  Mother  of  God 
knelt  before  the  throne  of  her  Son,  the  blessed  Margaret 
Mary  Alaooque  knelt  before  the  Sacred  Heart,  and  prayed 
that  the  aged  Pontiff  might  be  released  from  his  suffer- 
ings ;  and  so  while  we  hoped  that  he  was  to  see  the  re- 
demption of  Israel,  to  see  the  darkness  turned  into  light, 


**  Follow  Thou  Me."  69 

tlie  angel  of  death  received  his  high  command  and  took 
away  Pins  IX.  Well  may  we  say  we  shall  not  look  upon 
his  like  again  !  One  of  the  greatest,  if  not  the  greatest,  of 
the  popes  is  gone,  but  he  has  left  an  imperishable  name. 
But  though  we  mourn  to-day,  we  yet  have  cause  for  joy, 
for  out  of  the  grave  rises  the  figure  of  his  successor.  God 
has  already  spoken  ;  the  question  was  asked  in  the  solemn 
Conclave,  "Is  the  Lord's  anointed  before  me?"  and  to- 
day Leo  XIII.  wields  the  sceptre  of  Pius  IX.  The  pope 
does  not  die,  the  Church  does  not  die,  though  Pius  IX. 
may  die. 

And  who  is  this  man  chosen  to  fill  the  place  of  power  and 
jurisdiction  ?  He  is  strong  still,  not  too  much  advanced 
in  years,  for  he  is  only  sixty-eight  years  old,  a  man  of 
prayer  and  of  most  genial  courtesy,  kind  and  tender,  but 
at  the  same  time  firm  as  a  rock  in  the  assertion  of  justice, 
a  man  whose  glorious  qualities  have  already  proved  them- 
selves to  the  Church  of  God.  And  do  not  think,  my 
brethren,  that  I  am  speaking  from  imagination,  for  I  have 
had  the  great  honor  of  knowing  this  successor  of  Pius  IX. ; 
he  was  the  bishop  from  whom  I  received  orders  many 
years  ago.  I  speak  from  my  personal  recollection  of  him, 
and  I  believe  that  the  Spirit  of  God  has  rested  upon  the 
most  worthy  and  the  fittest  man  to  take  the  great  vacant 
throne  of  the  Vatican.  I  hope  and  trust  that  the  motto 
here  to-day — HibernicB  pate,  amantissimi — will  be  real- 
ized in  him,  and  that  the  tender,  true  love  of  the  people  of 
this  land  will  be  amply  deserved  by  Leo  XIII.  Therefore, 
though  we  mourn,  we  must  be  joyful.  The  Pope  is  dead, 
but  the  Pope  lives  ;  Peter  has  come  to  life  again,  and  our 
sorrow  must  give  way  to  joy.  Let  us  therefore  mingle 
our  prayers  of  hope  for  the  living  with  our  prayer  of  ten- 
der recollection  for  the  dead. 


The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX. 


This  lecture  was  delivered  some  years  ago.  It  will  bo  justly  prized  as  a 
faithful  delineation  of  the  most  remarkable  pontificate  since  the  days  of 
Peter. 


■U"Y  FRIENDS:  The  subject  of  our  consideration  this 
^*-  evening  is  the  grandest  that  could  occupy  the  mind 
or  employ  the  tongue  of  man  in  this  sad  age  of  ours  ;  it  is 
the  pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  This  nineteenth  century,  of 
which  we  boast  so  much,  is  an  age  of  great  material  pro- 
gress, an  age  of  railways,  of  electric  telegraphs,  of  ocean 
steamers,  and  of  discoveries  of  every  kind.  But  side  by 
side  with  all  these  material  improvements,  this  age  of  ours, 
considered  morally,  intellectually,  and  spiritually,  falls 
short  of  many  of  the  centuries  that  went  before.  In 
former  ages,  although  material  civilization  was  less,  still 
there  was  great  improvement  from  time  to  time  amongst 
the  people  in  some  great,  noble  cause  ;  as,  for  instance, 
when  Catholic  and  Christian  Europe  sent  forth  its  chivalry, 
and  men  exposed  their  lives  and  shed  their  blood — for 
what?  To  vindicate  the  sanctity  of  the  Lord's  sepulcUre, 
and  to  keep  floating  over  the  tomb  of  Jesus  Christ  the  stand- 
ard of  the  cross.  In  subsequent  ages  we  see  how  kings 
went  forth  from  their  thrones,  from  their  palaces,  and  from 
all  the  luxuries  that  surrounded  them,  and  exposed  them- 
selves to  a  thousand  dangers  in  some  high,  noble,  and  chi- 
valrous cause ;  as  when  a  prince  of  the  house  of  Austria 
led  all  the  intelligence,  the  energies,  and  the  bravery  of 
Christian  Europe  into  battle  with  the  Turks  on  the  waters 
of  Lepanto  Bay.  But  in  truth,  if  we  examine  public 
events  in  this  nineteenth  century,  we  find  nothing  great, 

70 


The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  'Tl 


« 


notMng  noble,  no  magnificent  idea  animating  the  nations. 
The  freedom  of  America  was  accomplished  before  the 
eighteenth  century  closed.  The  great  events  in  your  war 
go  along  with  the  glories  of  the  century  before  our  own  ; 
and,  with  the  exception  of  Catholic  emancipation,  there 
has  been  no  great  and  noble  act  of  any  nation  in  this  nine- 
teenth century.  Catholic  emancipation  is  not  the  glory 
and  not  the  volition  of  the  government  from  whom  it  was 
forced,  but  of  the  Irish  people,  who,  by  their  constancy 
and  their  religious  fidelity,  triumphed  over  their  old 
enemy.  This  century  was  ushered  in  by  the  terrible 
French  Revolution,  which  flooded  noble  France  with  the 
blood  of  its  best  and  most  loving  sons.  The  nineteenth 
century  has  witnessed  the  coalition  of  all  the  states  of 
Europe,  all  banding  themselves  together  to  bring  down 
by  brute  force  the  greatest  military  genius  of  this  or  any 
other  age,  the  first  Napoleon.  The  nineteenth  century  has 
witnessed  the  uprising  of  a  people  in  a  senseless,  brainless 
rebellion,  and  it  has  witnessed  the  terrible  retort  of  kingly 
brute  force  and  the  extinguishment  of  the  principles  of  a 
nation.  The  nineteenth  century  has  witnessed  one  nation 
invading  others,  its  neighbors,  without  any  pretence  or  cause 
of  justice  whatsoever.  There  have  been  wars  in  this  cen- 
tury, my  friends,  but  from  the  first  day  of  the  nineteenth 
century  down  to  tliis  I  will  venture  to  assert  that  not  a 
single  religious  war  has  been  waged,  not  a  single  war  has 
been  carried  on  that  has  not  been  founded  on  injustice — 
not  even  the  Crimean,  in  which  France  and  England  united 
to  crush  the  power  of  Russia.  There  did  we  see  the  eldest 
son  of  the  Church  allied  with  a  Protestant  and  a  most 
infidel  power  to  wage  war  on  the  side  of  Mohammed  against 
Christ.  This  nineteenth  century  has  witnessed  what 
Europe  never  saw  before :  robbers  crowned  with  kingly 
crowns  and  seated  on  royal  thrones.  Such  a  robber  was 
the  late  ruler  of  France. 

What  right  had  he  to  invade  the  dominions  of  Austria  ? 
What  right  had  he  to  claim  the  title  to  the  northern  por- 
tion of  Italy,   the  ancient  cradle  of  the  house  of  Savoy  j 


72  The  Pontificate  of  Fiua  IX. 

What  right  had  William  of  Prussia  and  N'apoleon  of 
France  to  wage  war,  during  the  progress  of  which,  though 
it  cost  oceans  of  blood,  it  came  out  that  the  motive  was 
one  of  mere  policy.  Also  the  robbery  caused  by  these 
two  thieves — I  can  call  them  nothing  else — who  were  plot- 
ting through  their  ministers  to  divide  Belgium,  an  inde- 
pendent state,  between  them.  Bismarck  was  the  thief 
who  first  proposed  the  robbery  to  Napoleon.  Good  God  t 
has  it  come  to  this,  that  the  rulers  of  Europe,  the  kings 
and  emperors  of  the  nations  and  i)eople,  have  their  blades 
ready  in  their  hands  to  shed  blood  because  one  outwitted 
the  other  in  robbery  ?  This  came  out  plainly  and  squarely 
in  the  mutual  accusations  of  the  prime  ministers  of  France 
and  Prussia. 

The  nineteenth  century  is  coming  to  a  close ;  and  a  fit- 
ting close  of  this  age  of  ours  is  the  highway  robbery  of  a 
king  invading  the  dominions  of  a  poor,  weak,  unarmed 
old  man,  and  taking  from  the  Pope  Rome  and  his  papal 
dominions.  They  have  no  title  under  heaven  for  it ;  they 
have  not  the  plea  of  justice  or  even  exigency  for  it ;  they 
do  it  simply  because  they  are  able.  Just  as  a  housebreaker 
or  a  burglar  might  go  into  your  house  to-night  or  to-morrow 
and  rob  you  of  all  you  had  in  the  world,  and  if  you  asked 
him  :  "Do  you  know  what  you  are  doing  ?  do  you  know 
that  you  are  a  scoundrel  and  a  robber?'^  and  he  should 
say  :  "  No.  I  am  able  to  do  it.  I  am  a  stronger  man  than 
you.  I  am  only  doing  what  Victor  Emmanuel  did  to  the 
Pope." 

But  amidst  all  the  meanness  and  all  the  common- 
places of  this  age  there  is  one  magnificent  spectacle,  one 
thing  that  marks  the  nineteenth  century  with  the  greatest 
glory,  and  one  peculiarly  its  own,  and  that  is  the  pontifi- 
cate of  Pius  IX.  (Applause.)  Whatever  else  this  cen- 
tury, our  age,  has  failed  to  produce,  it  has  produced  the 
noblest  Pope  and  the  grandest  man  that  ever  sat  upon  the 
chair  of  Peter.  Whatever  else  may  be  written  on  the  face 
of  the  history  of  the  nineteenth  century,  in  letters  of  blood 
or  in  letters  of  black  ink,  there  is  one  thing  that  must  be 


The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  73 

written  in  letters  of  burnished  gold,  and  it  is  the  pontifi- 
cate, glorious  and  magnificent,  of  this  saintly  old  man  who 
sits  in  Eome  in  all  his  afliictions,  still  crowned  with  the 
honor  and  the  glory  of  which  no  man  can  deprive  him 
Pius  IX.,  the  head  of  the  Catholic  Church.     (Applause.) 

But,  my  friends,  assertion  is  not  proof,  and  the  man 
who  makes  an  assertion  so  bold  as  mine  must  be  prepared 
to  prove  what  he  says,  or  else  it  would  be  far  better  for 
him  not  to  speak  at  all.  The  grandest  thing  in  the  world, 
save  the  conception  of  the  sacred  humanity  of  the  Son  of 
God  Incarnate,  the  grandest  thing  that  the  world  has  ever 
seen  is  the  Catholic  Church,  founded  by  our  Divine  Lord 
and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  representing  upon  this  earth  the 
unity,  the  sanctity,  and  the  eternity  of  the  Almighty  God 
who  made  it  —a  unity  all  the  more  wonderful  in  a  world  so 
divided  as  ours,  a  sanctity  all  the  more  wonderful  in  a 
world  so  unholy  and  defiled  as  ours,  an  eternity  all  the 
more  wonderful  in  a  world  so  evanescent,  so  change- 
able, so  transitory  as  ours.  And  this  is  the  meaning  of 
the  word  of  Scripture  when  the  Psalmist  says:  "God 
is  wonderful  in  all  His  works."  Every  work  of  God  is 
wonderful,  because  everything  that  exists  participates  in 
some  form  or  other  in  the  attributes  of  God  ;  and  the  more 
largely  anything  participates  in  the  divine  attributes  the 
more  wonderful  that  thing  becomes,  because  it  is  the  more 
like  to  God.  Now,  among  all  the  things  of  this  earth  there 
is  nothing  that  shows  so  highly  and  so  flatteringly  the  attri- 
butes of  God  as  His  holy  Catholic  Church,  for  she  repre- 
sents the  unity  of  God  in  the  unity  of  her  doctrine  of  con- 
scious obedience.  We  have  unity  of  doctrine.  We  are 
two  hundred  millions,  my  friends,  scattered  all  the  world 
over.  We  find  ourselves  sometimes  in  communities;  as, 
for  instance,  in  the  great  cities  of  New  York  and  Brook- 
lyn, where  Catholics  are  numbered  by  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands. Sometimes  we  find  ourselves  in  communities  of 
nations,  as  in  the  green  old  mother-land  that  bore  me, 
where  that  whole  nation,  blessed  be  God  !  is  Catholic. 

Sometimes,   again,  we  find   ourselves  broken  up  into 


7i  The  Ponttftcate  of  Pius  IX. 

small  communities  in  the  midst  of  our  Protestant  breth- 
ren and  fellow-citizens,  the  Catholics  only  representing  a 
unit  in  the  community.  You  sometimes  find  a  Catholic 
family  in  the  far  West,  out  on  the  bosom  of  the 
vast  prairies,  settled  down  in  a  little  shanty  on  the 
banks  of  a  little  Western  river.  But  wherever  you  find 
it,  whether  in  nations,  in  cities  or  small  communities,  in 
individuals,  if  you  find  one  Catholic  you  find  personified 
in  him  the  certain  faith  of  two  hundred  millions  of  men. 
(Applause.)  Question  one  of  them,  and  if  he  knows  his  ca- 
techism you  have  the  response  of  all.  Ask  him^  and  he  will 
tell  you  what  the  200,000,000  will  tell  you,  if  you  have  only 
time  and  patience  to  go  and  ask  every  man  amongst  them  ; 
there  is  no  difference  of  opinion  or  belief  in  their  doctrines. 
God,  in  His  true  Church,  has  wedded  together  two  hundred 
millions  of  intelligences  varying  and  dissenting  on  every 
other  point,  and  He  has  made  them  united  in  faith.  In 
their  obedience,  in  like  manner.  Catholics  are  one.  Ask 
any  Catholic  in  the  world — and  you  have  asked  them  all 
— who  is  the  head  of  the  Church,  and  the  answer  will  be, 
"The  Pope  of  Rome."  "  Do  3'ou  acknowledge  him  as  the 
head  of  the  bishops  and  people?"  Yes  %  in  every  single 
point  he  is  the  highest  of  all.  Even  as  the  proud  Egyptian 
pyramids,  taking  hold  of  the  earth,  covering  acres  of  soil, 
sweeping  aside  and  resisting  the  power  and  might  of 
successive  ages,  yet  still,  tapering  up  to  the  summit, 
end  in  one  single  block  of  stone  pointing  to  heaven  ;  so 
the  Catholic  Church,  spreading  hei'self  out  and  cov- 
ering the  whole  world  in  such  strength  that  nei- 
ther time,  nor  the  world,  nor  hell  can  destroy  it,  she 
yet  tapers  up  toward  God  through  the  succession  of  the 
clergy,  the  clergy  bearing  their  episcopacy,  and  the  whole 
hierarchy  of  the  Church  terminating  in  one  man  who  is  the 
head  of  all,  the  commander  whose  voice  all  obey,  because 
that  man  represents  Peter,  and  Peter  represents  Jesus 
Christ,  the  Head  of  the  Catholic  Church.     (Applause.) 

The  Church  represents  the  sanctity  of  God.     For  two 
thousand  years  she  has  stood  before  the  world,  and  every 


The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  75 

philosopher,  every  learned  man,  has  looked  upon  her  with 
a  keen,  searching,  hostile  eye.  Every  fault  has  been  placed 
upon  her,  every  sharp  cunning  conceivable  has  been 
flung  at  her.  Yet  she  stands  before  them  all,  with  the 
simple  word  upon  her  lips  :  "TeU.  me,  O  ye  learned  men, 
ye  philosophers  !  at  w^hat  time,  in  what  day,  in  what  hour, 
at  what  moment  of  my  existence  of  two  thousand  years 
can  you  prove  that  I  have  sanctioned,  encouraged,  or  even 
tolerated  the  slightest  sin  ?  "VYhere  is  the  child  of  mine 
that  will  be  able  to  rise  up  in  the  valley  of  Josaphat  and 
say,  '0  mother!  I  believed  in  you  and  you  told  me  I 
might  teU  a  lie'?"  "I  never  said  it,"  the  Church  an- 
swers. "  O  mother !  I  believed  in  you,  and  you  told  me  I 
might  nourish  a  passing  impure  thought."  The  Church 
comes  forth  and  says,  ' '  In  the  name  of  God,  thou  liest. 
Thy  perdition  is  on  thine  own  head."  Not  the  slightest 
sin,  or  approach  to  sin,  is  tolerated  in  the  intelligent  and 
magnificent  morality  of  the  Catholic  Church.  She  reflects 
the  sanctity  of  God  in  the  prayer  that  never  dies  from  her 
virgin  lips  for  the  outpouring  of  those  graces  in  the  sacra- 
ments that,  when  partaken  of,  make  holy,  even  as  the  an- 
gels of  God,  the  greatest  sinner  on  earth.  If  they  submit 
to  the  Church's  influences,  she,  like  God,  is  not  only  holy 
in  herseK,  but  she  is  able  to  make  them  holy.  She  repre- 
sents the  eternity  of  God,  for  Christ  our  Lord  founded  her 
upon  a  rock.  But  is  that  rock  Peter  ?  Says  the  apostle, 
*'The  rock  w^as  Christ";  and  the  rock  was  Christ, 
the  broad,  eternal,  God-like  foundation  of  the  Catho- 
lic Church ;  and  upon  His  divine  bosom  He  planted  the 
visible  rock,  who  was  Peter,  saying,  "Thou  art  Peter, 
and  upon  this  rock  I  will  build  my  Church."  Peter 
was  the  rock  set  upon  Christ,  for,  says  St.  Paul,  "the 
Church  is  founded  on  the  foundation  of  the  apostles 
and  the  prophets,  the  great  corner-stone  himself  being 
Christ  Jesus  our  Lord."  The  Church  cannot  fail  until 
Peter  fails — until  Peter  fails  in  his  successors.  Peter  can- 
not fail  until  Christ  fails  ;  Christ  is  God  and  cannot  fail ; 
therefore  the  Church  of  God  shall  live  for  ever,  and  the 


76  The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX. 

gates  of  hell  and  our  enemies  shall  never  prevail  against 
her. 

Kingdoms  and  empires  may  pass  away  ;  human  great- 
ness is  but  the  dream  of  him  who  dreametli  in  the  morn- 
ing ;  man  may  come  and  man  may  go  ;  but  the  Church 
stands  for  ever.  Human  weakness  may  reveal  itself,  as  it 
does  every  day,  in  the  old  fonns  of  detestable  sin  and 
crime.  Society  may  groan  under  its  own  miseries  and  its 
murders,  its  impurities,  its  abortions,  its  dishonesties,  and 
men  may  cry  out  in  their  despair,  as  they  cry  in  the  daily 
press :  "  When  shall  this  end  \  When  shall  we  have  jus- 
tice, purity,  and  honesty?"  They  do  not  recognize  the 
fact  that  no  blood,  no  impurity,  no  dishonesty,  no  sin  can 
ever  be  tolerated  by  the  Church  of  Grod,  or  approach 
the  Catholic  Church.  And  she  alone  is  the  saviour  of 
society,  because  she  alone,  in  her  dogmas,  can  create  what 
the  world  is  crying  out  for  in  this  our  day.  The  world 
may  divide  itself,  as  it  does,  into  a  thousand  schools  of 
philosophy,  a  thousand  schemes  and  systems  of  varying 
opinion  or  religion.  Every  religious  teacher  may  come  out 
with  his  own  scheme,  as  you  will  find  by  reading  the  daily 
papers.  You  will  read  there  a  mumble- jumble  of  doc- 
trines ;  that  such  a  man  teaches  one  thing,  another  man 
teaches  the  very  opposite,  and  that  Mr.  So-and-so  is  con- 
sidered a  very  pious  sort  of  a  religious  man,  for  he  con- 
descends to  acknowledge  the  existence  of  God  and  the 
divinity  of  Jesus  Christ.  There  is  no  unity  in  the  conflict- 
ing opinions  of  the  world  ;  and  yet  men  are  blind  enough, 
wilfully  blind  enough,  not  to  perceive  the  magnificent 
unity,  second  only  to  the  essential  unity  of  God,  which 
guides  the  councils,  animates  the  words,  and  personifies 
the  obedience  of  the  Catholic  Church.  Well,  my  friends, 
if  you  consider  these  things  you  will  be  obliged  to  con- 
clude, even  if  you  are  not  Catholics,  that  thei'e  must  be 
something  divine  in  the  religion  which  captivates  the  in- 
telligence of  two  hundred  millions  of  men,  and  which 
makes  that  intelligence  as  one  mind  and  as  one  man  in 
its  expression  of  religious  belief.     It  touches  with  a  sane- 


The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  77 

tifying  hand  every  form  of  sin,  and  by  destroying  sin 
changes  the  sinner  into  the  child  of  God.  Beginning  with 
the  Sacrament  of  Baptism,  it  goes  on  to  the  Sacrament  of 
Penance,  and  from  that  to  the  Holy  Communion,  until  it 
finally  wipes  away  the  very  latest  miseries  and  fears 
which  will  attach  themselves  to  the  simplest  and  holiest 
by  the  consoling  and  sanctifying  Sacrament  of  Extreme 
Unction.  There  must  be  something  divine  in  a  Church  that 
has  been  able  to  stand  for  two  thousand  yeard  ;  that  has 
never  allowed  any  political  or  philosophical  question  to  pass 
by  without  examining  it  and  judging  of  it ;  that  has  never 
feared  to  take  up  any  enquiry  of  science  ;  ready  to  meet 
every  enquirer,  give  him  his  answer,  and  prove  it  to  him. 
This  Catholic  Church  never  dies  ;  never  knows  how  to  die  ; 
never  grows  old  ;  will  never  know  the  day  of  dissolution. 
And  the  Church  alone,  like  unf alien  man,  will  pass  from 
its  militant  state  to  the  triumphant,  and  will  reign  as  the 
Church  of  God,  for  ever  and  ever,  in  heaven. 

If  such  be  the  condition  and  attributes  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  if  history  proves  that  these  are  her  attributes,  it 
is  natural,  my  friends,  to  expect  something  great,  some- 
thing far  more  than  ordinary,  something  grand  and  heroic 
in  the  man  whom  Almighty  God  selects  to  make  the  head 
of  that  Church.  Consider  for  a  moment  the  two  official 
attributes  of  this  man  ;  then  we  shall  gather  what  we  may 
expect  from  his  personal,  attributes.  Officially,  the  great- 
est attribute  of  the  pope  is  infallibility  as  head  of  the 
Catholic  Church.  The  pope  may  tell  a  thousand  lies,  but 
there  is  one  thing  that  he  cannot  do  :  he  cannot  tolerate  a 
lie  or  command  the  Catholic  Church  to  believe  a  lie. 
Understand  me  well.  This  is  a  question  not  understood  in 
our  day.  Some  Protestants,  especially,  imagine  that 
when  we  talk  of  Papal  Infallibility  we  mean  that  the 
pope  can  do  no  wrong.  The  pope  can  do  as  much  wrong 
as  you  or  I.  The  pope  goes  to  confession  every  week  like 
every  other  priest.  If  he  does  not  go  there  sorry  for  his 
sins,  making  up  his  mind  to  renounce  them,  and  does  not 
perform  his  penance,  he  may  be  lost  like  any  other  man. 


78  The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX. 

But  remember  we  are  not  talking  of  him  now  as  an  in- 
dividual, as  a  person,  a  mere  man,  but  as  the  head  of 
the  Catholic  Church.  As  the  supreme  pastor,  the  su- 
preme ruler  of  the  Church,  the  first  attribute  that  belongs 
to  him  is  that  he  cannot  command  the  Catholic  Church 
to  believe  a  lie ;  therefore  he  cannot  tell  a  lie  to  the 
Church  in  his  capacity,  speaking  ex  cathedra — that  is, 
from  the  throne  of  Peter  as  the  head  of  the  Church.  And 
this  stands  to  reason,  my  friends,  for  the  Catholic  Church 
is  bound  to  accept  the  pope's  words  when  he  speaks  as 
head  of  the  Church  ;  she  is  bound  to  bear  allegiance  to  him 
and  to  take  the  law  from  his  lips.  There  is  no  appeal  from 
him  when  the  Pope  speaks  the  doctrine  of  the  Catholic 
Church  on  such  and  such  a  point. 

The  Scripture  speaks  of  that  Church :  "  Wisdom,  Di- 
vine Wisdom,  hath  built  unto  herself  a  house,  and  slie 
carved  out  seven  pillars  of  stone."  What  are  these  seven 
pillars?  "That  of  old,  a  Temple  of  Divine  Wisdom," 
says  St.  Bernard,  "they  are  the  virtues  of  Faitli^  Hope^ 
and  Charity,  theologically,  and  the  virtues  of  Temperance, 
Prudence,  Justice,  and  Fortitude,  morally."  Upon  these 
seven  pillars  the  Church  of  God  rests  ;  the  Church  was 
founded  in  faith  ;  the  Church  lives  in  hope  and  has  divine 
grace  and  charity.  The  Chnrch  has  prudence  beyond  the 
most  prudent  of  men  ;  justice  that  has  never  compromised 
itself  by  the  slightest  concession  ;  fortitude  that  has  been 
able  to  fill  the  world  with  martyrs  ;  and  a  temperance  that 
reveals  itself  in  the  highest  form  of  holy  asceticism,  in 
those  who  are  consecrated  to  the  cloister.  And  as  it  is  in 
the  Church  of  God,  so  is  it  with  the  interior  character  of 
the  glorious  man  who  stands  at  the  helm  and  guides  the 
ship  of  the  Church.  Pius  IX.  is  a  man  of  faith.  He  has 
been  ruined  by  showing  his  faith  in  his  own  people— in  the 
faith  of  the  heart  of  Italy,  in  the  faith  and  integrity  of 
the  Italian  people.  Tliat  was  human  faith,  and  it  was 
destroyed  and  crumbled  away  before  him  by  the  ingrati- 
tude of  his  own  Roman  people.  But  he  had  a  higher  faith  ; 
he  leaned  upon  God  with  the  most  implicit  faith.    From 


The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  79 

the  day  of  his  coronation  to  this  hour  he  has  lived  in  faith  ; 
the  Church  has  always  rested  on  faith.  I  have  seen  him  in 
the  most  of  his  difficulties  ;  I  have  seen  him  when  Rome 
was  threatened  ;  when  the  bishops,  prelates,  and  cardinals 
came  to  him,  saying,  with  pallid  lips :  "  Holy  Father,  you 
must  hy ;  your  life  is  in  danger."  And  then  unmoved, 
with  a  smile  of  supreme  confidence  in  his  voice,  I  have 
heard  the  grand  old  pontifE  say  :  "  Where  is  your  faith  ? 
Remember  the  words  of  Christ :  '  Have  faith  in  God,  and 
if  you  have  that  you  can  say,  Move  this  mountain,  and 
it  will  be  moved.'  "  Never  for  an  instant  did  his  divine 
faith  falter.     (Applause.) 

He  remained  liim  and  as  immovable  as  the  rock  upon 
which  the  Church  of  God  is  founded,  while  the  most 
learned  men  in  Europe  rose  up  and  departed  from  him  and 
from  the  Church,  and  he,  like  the  Divine,  unerring  Master, 
said :  "Will  you  also  leave  me  %  If  the  whole  world  leave 
me,  my  faith  shall  never  move."  Firm  as  a  rock,  when 
England  and  her  clergy  approached  him  in  a  spirit  of  com- 
promise, and  only  asked  certain  conditions,  when  they 
would  yield  and  return  to  the  communion  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  the  answer  of  the  pontiff  was :  "  No  conditions,  no 
compact  can  I  make  that  would  compromise  the  deposit  of 
the  Church's  faith.  If  you  do  not  believe,  I  can  never 
receive  vou  into  her  bosom." 

A  man  of  hope !  O  my  friends  !  how  magnificently 
strong  is  the  hope  that  sustained  the  old  man  in  the  ex- 
treme old  age  that  crowned  his  poor,  venerable  head.  In 
the  midst  of  the  afflictions  that  would  have  broken  a  strong 
heart,  when  the  temporal  crown  fell  from  his  brows,  and 
the  hands  of  Catholic  men  placed  upon  him  a  crown  of 
tliorns,  he  was  still  sustained  with  a  mighty  hope  within 
him. 

Well  did  he  say  with  the  apostles  :  "  We  are  saved  by 
hope."  Still  did  he  remain  at  his  post,  cheering  the  dis- 
consolate, animating  the  faltering,  sending  out  his  word 
from  year  to  year  to  the  earth,  proclaiming  :  "  I  am  here  a 
prisoner  amongst  my  people  ;  but  I  know  what  I  hope  for, 


80  The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX. 

and  the  victory  and  the  triumph  shall  be  mine  at  last." 
(Applause.) 

A  man  of  love !  Where  was  there  ever  a  man  with  cha- 
rity such  as  his  ^  0  my  friends  !  if  you  had  only  beheld 
him,  as  I  have  often  seen  bim,  descending  from  his  carriage 
in  some  by-way  of  Rome,  going  in  there  amongst  the  poor 
people ;  the  women  coming  out  from  their  houses,  bringing 
their  children  to  him  to  receive  his  blessing ;  distributing 
his  liberal  alms,  himself  so  poor — their  gratitude  finding 
vent  in  a  stream  of  tears,  as  they  bowed  to  receive  his 
graceful  benediction.  He  passed  amongst  them  as  the 
very  personification  of  Him  who  walked  amidst  the  path- 
ways of  the  poor  in  the  fields  of  Judea  and  of  Galilee.  A 
man  of  love  !  As  well  have  I  often  watched  him  in  some 
quiet  nook  of  the  church,  surrounded  by  the  nobles  and 
by  the  brilliant  dignitaries  of  the  Church — himself  the  idol 
of  the  Romans.  The  moment  he  came  before  the  presence 
of  the  Blessed  Sacrament,  amidst  the  smoke  of  incense  the 
old  man  prostrated  himself,  and  there  you  almost  saw 
with  the  eyes  of  the  body  the  heart  of  that  old  man  going 
out  from  him  on  the  wings  of  love.  You  see  him  enter 
the  tabernacle  and  hold  communion — the  communion  of 
charity — with  Jesus  Christ ;  you  see  the  tears  after  a  time 
stream  from  his  eyes,  and  you  see  the  aged  head  bowed 
down,  scarcely  able  to  conceal  from  the  vulgar  gaze  the 
enraptured  expression  of  love  that  overspread  his 
countenance. 

This  is  the  man  which  the  Church  of  Grod,  in  the  midst 
of  her  afflictions  and  joys,  upholds  and  obeys  in  this  our 
day.  Prudence  is  his.  If  ever  there  was  an  exhibition  of 
prudence  in  man,  it  was  in  the  last  action  of  Pius  IX. 
before  he  was  dethroned.  Prudence  means  a  virtue,  my 
friends,  that  is  capable  of  foreseeing  what  was  to  come. 
Prudentia  is  the  Latin  word  for  it.  It  means  prevision  of 
what  is  to  come.  We  say  that  is  prudence  when  a  man 
makes  a  good  investment  in  land.  He  buys  a  landed  es- 
tate that  is  out  of  the  way,  because  he  foresees  that  in  a 
few  years  it  may  be  of  immense  value.     It  becomes  built 


The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  81 

upon,  and  streets  opened  to  it.  Then  people  say,  "  What 
a  pj-udent  man  he  was"!  and  men  say  more  than  this : 
"  What  a  foreseeing  man  he  was  !  " 

Prudence  means  foresight.  Yery  few  men  have  this 
virtue  in  its  highest  degree.  There  is  a  prudence  that 
keeps  a  man  from  the  ordinary,  little  battling  worries  of 
life  ;  but  the  prudence  that  is  the  highest  of  all,  that  rises 
up  on  the  wings  of  intelligence,  soaring  like  the  eagle  be- 
yond and  over  the  ordinary  interests  of  mankind,  is  able  to 
take  a  glance  of  the  things  going  on  and  prepare  for  them. 
This  magnificent  prudence  is  the  inheritance  of  the  popes. 
The  learned,  perhaps  the  most  learned  man  on  the  earth — 
Dr.  ISTewman — speaking  of  the  popes  and  their  action  on 
society,  says,  "Their  leading  virtue  was  prudence."  It 
was  their  prevision  that  met  and  disarmed  the  mighty  bar- 
baric hordes  that  broke  up  the  Eoman  Empire.  It  was 
their  prevision  that  enabled  the  state  to  defend  itself 
against  the  Turks  and  saved  Christendom  from  the  de- 
grading yoke  of  the  Mohammedan  religion.  It  was  by 
their  prudence  that  they  were  enabled  to  save  the  rock  of 
Catholicity  from  out  the  confusion  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion ;  but  never  in  the  history  of  the  pontiffs  of  the  Church 
of  God  is  there  an  act  of  such  supreme  prevision  as  the  act 
of  the  last  Council  of  Rome,  when  the  whole  Church  of 
God  assembled,  and,  represented  by  its  eight  hundred 
bishops,  declared  as  a  dogma  of  the  Catholic  faith  that  the 
Pope  possessed  personal  infallibility  as  the  head  of  the 
Church. 

Let  me  prove  this.  When  that  definition  was  pro- 
nounced, and  after  the  old,  original  acknowledged  faith  of 
the  Catholics  was  put  in  the  form  of  a  dogma — an  article 
of  faith — how  few  thought  of  what  has  come  to  pass  since 
the  day  when  that  definition  was  defined  ;  when  your 
bishops  and  all  the  bishops  of  the  world  were  assembled. 
I  was  there  at  the  time.  I  witnessed  everything.  I  never 
thought  that  the  Pope  was  so  near  the  loss  of  his  temporal 
dominions.  No  bishop  or  cardinal  thought  it ;  we  could  not 
understand  the  whole  thing ;  we  could  not  understand 


88  Tme  Pontificate  of  Pitts  IX. 

why  that  council  was  called  and  pressed  on  so  by  the 
Pope  himself ;  we  did  not  foresee  that  a  Bismarck  would 
arise,  like  another  Antichrist,  to  persecute  the  Church  of 
God  ;  we  did  not  foresee  the  downfall  of  France  and  the 
triumphant  revolution  of  Italy,  with  the  deeper  ruin  of  the 
temporal  power  to  the  Pope  and  the  possible  expulsion  of 
the  person  of  his  successor  from  Rome.  These  things  no 
man  foresaw  except  one.  No  man  saw  what  was  coming ; 
but  a  prudence  more  than  human  prepared  the  Church  for 
the  emergency. 

For  two  thousand  years  the  pope  has  been  in  Rome. 
Surrounded  by  the  prestige  of  his  temporal  power,  he  rep- 
resented, as  Pontiff  of  Rome,  palpably  and  visibly,  the 
Church  of  God.  He  was  recognized  by  the  whole  Church. 
It  was  easy  to  know  him,  easy  to  find  him.  He  was  like  a 
burning  light  in  a  candlestick,  lighting  up  everything. 
The  kings  of  Europe  recognized  him  ;  but  they  take  him  out 
of  Rome  and  send  him  an  exUe  amongst  men — send  him  a 
stricken  wanderer  on  the  earth,  without  the  prestige  of  hia 
temporal  power,  perhaps  hunted  by  those  diabolical  persecu- 
tors, those  crowned  tyrants,  those  kings'  prime  ministers 
who  warred  against  him  that  ruin  and  confusion  might  come 
to  the  Church.  The  bishops  might  be  tempted  to  rebel.  The 
Church  is  full  of  examples  of  bishops  who  have  from  time 
to  time  rebelled  against  the  pope.  Now,  when  the  storm 
was  coming,  the  spiritual  authority  of  the  pope  was  put  in 
form  and  recognized  directly  as  from  God. 

This  infallible  authority  from  God  is  required  to  be 
the  very  central  bond  of  the  Church  in  the  days  of  her 
weakness  that  have  come  upon  her.  Almighty  God  in- 
spired this  man  with  the  thought  that  the  moment  had 
come  for  the  Church  to  commit  herself  to  set  that  sign 
upon  her  Pontiff  which,  wherever  he  be,  in  exile  or  in 
misery,  no  other  man  can  tear  it  away — the  sign  of  his 
personal  infallibility  dogmatically  recognized  in  the  head 
of  the  Catholic  Church.     (Applause.) 

He  now  can  enforce  his  decrees — they  are  the  Curia 
Romana.    He  cannot  now,  as  in  the  middle  ages,  call  a 


The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  83 

secular  army  to  enforce  his  decrees.  Se  cannot  now  lean 
on  the  loyalty  of  king  or  kaiser ;  they  have  all  turned 
against  him.  All  are  his  enemies ;  yet  the  moment  when 
every  human  aid,  when  every  human  faculty,  every  human 
prestige  was  withdrawn  from  him,  the  heavens  were  opened 
and  the  dogma  of  Infallibility  was  let  down  upon  his  head 
from  the  bosom  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  God  of  Truth.  It 
shines  out  upon  the  uncrowned  head  of  the  Church's  mon- 
arch. Pius  IX.,  the  grandest  Pope  that  ever  lived,  re- 
ceived the  recognition  of  the  Holy  Church  of  God  as  dog- 
matically infallible.    (Applause.) 

Now  he  may  go  from  Rome  to-morrow  and  he  may  hide 
himself  in  any  corner  of  the  earth  ;  now  he  may  go  pursued 
by  the  bloodhounds  of  tyranny  and  revolution  ;  but  now 
at  least  we  know  that  when  he  speaks  to  the  Church  no 
prince,  no  nation,  no  bishop  can  for  an  instant  cavil  at  his 
decision  without  inheriting  the  wrath  of  God  and  the  curse 
of  heresy  and  separation  from  the  Catholic  Church. 

His  justice  !  One  of  the  greatest  charges  that  history 
makes  against  some  of  the  popes  of  the  middle  ages  was 
that  they  had  great  power  and  great  wealth,  and  were  fond 
of  their  relatives,  as  every  man  is.  (Laughter.)  They  al- 
lowed the  ties  of  nature  to  become  so  strong  that  they  en- 
riched some  of  their  relatives.  It  was  called  nepotism. 
Injustice  is  charged,  and  the  Church  is  looked  down  upon  ; 
and  some  people  imagine  that  the  Pope  is  impeccable — the 
Pope  cannot  make  a  mistake. 

Pius  IX.  may  take  some  priest,  and  make  a  bishop  of 
him,  who  is,  perhaps,  unworthy ;  but  the  Church  would 
not  approve  of  it.  Nor  is  he  infallible  in  his  actions,  but 
only  when  he  teaches  the  Church  the  word  of  God. 

Mark  the  grand  character,  the  rigid,  exact  justice  of 
this  aged  man,  which  I  will  describe  to  you.  He  was  made 
Pope  six-and-twenty  years  ago.  He  had  several  brothers 
with  large  families,  and  their  friends  came  to  them  felici- 
tating and  congratulating  them,  and  said  to  them  :  "  Now 
that  your  uncle  is  made  Pope,  of  course  you  will  get  an 
estate."     You  know  this  business  of  nepotism  came  up 


84  The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX. 

again  amongst  them.  Well,  tlie  nephews  and  cousins 
thought  they  had  nothing  to  do  but  go  to  Rome  and  see  if 
the  uncle  would  do  anything  for  them.  The  very  first 
thing  that  Pius  IX.  did  as  soon  as  he  was  made  Pope  was 
to  make  a  law  that  no  relatives  of  his  were  to  enter  the 
gates  of  Rome.  He  stands  before  his  enemies  to-day,  and 
not  one  of  them  has  accused  him  of  nepotism  and  in- 
justice. 

His  temperance.  He  don' t  know  the  meaning  of  what 
you  call  temperance,  that  keeps  you  from  getting  drunk. 
Pius  IX.  has  been  six-and-twenty  years  Pope.  For  the  six- 
and-twenty  years  he  has  eaten  and  drunk  so  moderately 
that  his  personal  expenses  for  eating,  drinking,  and  cloth- 
ing cost  but  one  hundred  and  twenty  pounds  sterling  a 
year — that  is,  six  hundred  dollars  a  year  to  keep  him  in 
food,  drink,  clothing,  and  personal  expenses.  The  Queen 
of  England  has  a  thousand  pounds  a  year  for  every  pound 
Pius  had  when  Pope  of  Rome,  and,  whether  she  spends  it 
or  not,  she  takes  it  all.     (Laughter.) 

His  fortitude.  *We  have  already  seen  by  the  "  Nan 
possumus^^  that  he  is  the  strongest,  bravest,  most  heroic 
man  that  ever  sat  peaceably  upon  the  throne  of  Peter,  and 
that  he  fills  his  office  with  a  fortitude  which  no  power  on 
earth  nor  hell  could  overcome.  He  is  dear  to  the  Catholic 
world — to  tlie  Irish  world.  To  the  Catholic  world  he  is 
especially  dear,  inasmuch  as  a  grace  was  given  to  him  that 
was  preserved  for  him  for  two  thousand  years — the  grace 
that  was  never  vouchsafed  to  any  other  pope — the  grace 
which,  like  every  grace  which  is  divine,  makes  him  singu- 
lar among  all  the  other  pontiffs. 

A  grace  that  was  preserved  for  him  in  the  mind  and 
councils  of  God  from  all  eternity — namely,  that  the  woman 
whom  the  evangelist  saw  crowned  in  heaven  with  a  crown 
of  twelve  stars,  that  the  woman  whom  Almighty  God  spoke 
of  as  the  crowned  woman  who  was  to  crush  the  serpent's 
head,  that  the  woman  who  was  crowned  with  the  blood  of 
her  Divine  Son  that  fell  upon  her  head  from  the  bleeding 
hands  which  were  stretched  out  over  her  on  Calvary,  should 


TiTE  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  85 

receive  from  the  hands  of  Pius  IX.,  in  his  dogmatic  defini- 
tion, the  last  crown  that  the  Church  of  God  could  put 
upon  her  head  in  the  proclamation  of  the  Immaculate  Con- 
ception of  the  Blessed  Virgin  Mary. 

Twelve  hundred  years  ago  a  heretic  denied  that  Mary 
was  the  Mother  of  God.  The  moment  that  this  word 
passed  the  lips  of  Nestorius  the  whole  Catholic  world  was 
moved  as  one.  Every  man  and  every  woman  felt  it  as  a 
personal  insult.  They  called  for  a  council,  and  a  council 
was  held  in  the  city  of  Ephesus.  The  bishops  came 
from  all  parts  of  the  world  ;  the  people  came  from  all  the 
nations,  and  the  great  city  was  filled  w^ith  an  excited, 
alarmed,  and  indignant  throng,  waiting  by  thousands  out- 
side the  council  chamber.  In  the  moment  that  they  de- 
clared by  a  dogmatic  decree  the  doctrine  that  the  Virgin 
Mary  was  the  Mother  of  God,  such  was  the  impatience  of 
the  mob  that  a  bishop  came  out  to  tell  them  :  "  It  is  de- 
creed, and  it  is  Catliolic  faith,  that  the  Virgin  Mary  is  the 
Mother  of  God."  The  people  received  it  with  a  shout  and 
clamor ;  the  Catholic  heart  expanded  ;  like  an  electric 
flash  it  went  from  land  to  land,  and  the  churches  pro- 
claimed Mary's  divine  maternity,  and  the  whole  Catholic 
Church  was  filled  with  joy.  Why  ?  Because  one  of  the. 
marks  of  the  true  Catholic  Church  is  love  and  ven€»ration 
—quick,  ardent,  personal  love  for  the  Blessed  Virgin 
Mary.  Most  singular  is  it.  The  Gospel  says  that  Mary, 
inspired  by  God,  said  :  "Henceforth  all  generations  shall 
call  me  blessed."  Remember  that  is  in  the  Gospel,  that 
all  believe.  Every  Christian  that  believes  the  Gospel  be- 
lieves that  all  generations  should  call  Mary  blessed.  Yet, 
strange  to  say,  outside  the  Catholic  Church  she  has  not 
received  any  title.  She  is  called  the  Virgin,  any  name 
you  like.  And  sometimes  we  are  called  blasphemers  ;  I 
will  not  say  by  foolish  men  or  by  irreverent  men,  but  the 
drift  of  the  Gospel  shows  that  the  Catholic  Church  must 
be  the  Church  of  the  Gospel,  for  the  Catholic  Church 
alone  calls  Mary  "blessed."  My  friends,  the  spirit  that 
was  awakened  by  Nestorius  one  thousand  two  hundred 


86  The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX, 

years  ago  broke  out  again  in  this  century,  and  the  whole 
Catholic  world  with  one  voice  cried  out  in  acclamation 
with  the  word  of  Pius  IX.  that  Mary  had  never  sinned. 
By  divine  preventing  grace  and  the  anticipated  application 
of  the  merits  and  the  blood  of  her  Divine  Son  she  was  pre- 
served from  sin,  and  even  Adam  himself  did  not  sin  in 
Mary.  You  will  ask  me.  Why  was  this  defined  ?  Ah ! 
behold  the  importance  and  wisdom  of  the  Pontiff. 

In  this  age  of  ours  there  is  a  spirit  of  insubordination 
to  authority,  to  prevent  which  came  this  dogma  of  infalli- 
bility. Outside  of  us — the  Catholic  Church — the  world  is 
drifting  very  rapidly  to  the  denial  of  the  divinity  of  Jesus 
Christ.  Protestantism  to-day,  in  every  land,  is  assuming 
the  form  which  is  called  "  Unitarian"  ;  and  it  is  the  boast 
of  the  Unitarians  that  they  are  disturbing  aU  the  views, 
all  that  is  intellectual,  and  all  that  is  spiritual  in  Protest- 
antism. Every  Protestant  writer  nowadays  is  speculat- 
ing about  the  divinity  of  Christ.  Read  the  lectures  and 
sermons  in  the  New  York  papers  and  you  will  see  freely 
discussed  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  is  an  oi)en  ques- 
tion, and  some  believe  that  time  will  change  the  divinity 
of  Jesus  Christ — the  very  comer-stone  on  which  the  Chris- 
tian religion  is  founded.  I  may  call  myself  a  Christian  ; 
so  may  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  ;  so  may  the  Emperor  of 
China  call  himself  a  Christian — as  good  and  just  as  much 
a  Christian  as  any  other.  The  Protestant  who  denies  the 
divinity  of  Jesus  Christ  is  no  more  entitled  to  call  himself 
a  Christian  than  the  Emperor  of  China,  who  is  a  pagan. 
Now,  the  Church  surrounded  that  mystery  of  the  Incarna- 
tion with  every  form  of  dogmatic  defence  that  could  be 
devised,  and  threw  a  rampart  of  eternal  truth  about  Him 
who  is  the  Divine  Author  of  all  truth.  One  thing  alone 
remained.  One  of  the  arguments  used  to  deny  the  divini- 
ty, and  shake  the  faith  of  those  who  believed  in  the  di- 
vinity, of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  was  that  He  was  the  Son 
of  Mary.  Men  said :  ' '  How  can  you  say  He  is  God  ?  He 
is  the  Son  of  Mary.  Mary  was  the  daughter  of  Adam. 
Adam  was  a  sinner.     Consequently  how  oould  God  be 


Toe  Ponttftcatb  vf  Pms  IX.  87 

born  of  a  sinner?"  There  was  the  argument.  How  was 
the  Church  of  God  to  meet  it  \  She  had  to  assert  dog- 
matically that  Mary  was  the  Mother  of  God,  to  cement 
her  infallible  love  and  express  that  deep  burning  faith, 
that  divine  instinct  in  the  mind  of  God  about  Mary.  Pius 
came  forth  at  the  head  of  the  episcopacy  and  proclaimed 
to  the  world :  "  Let  no  man  say  that  Jesus  Christ  is  not 
God  because  Mary  was  His  Mother.  I  declare,  in  the 
name  of  God  and  of  our  Church,  that  that  woman,  though 
a  child  of  earth,  had  never  sinned.  Even  in  her  concep- 
tion she  was  freed  from  sin  in  order  to  be  the  Mother  of 
God."  And  thus  did  the  Church  place  the  last  crowning 
stone  of  that  edifice  of  defence  of  die  divinity  of  our  Lord 
by  proclaiming  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  Mary. 

Catholics  are  thus  assured  that  the  most  exalted  per- 
son on  earth  in  spirituals  is  the  Pope  of  Rome. 

God  governs  the  Church  through  the  pope,  therefore 
there  is  no  appeal  from  the  Church,  and  it  has  been  the 
recognized  doctrine  of  the  Catholic  Church,  from  the  day 
she  was  founded  to  this  hour,  that  there  is  no  appeal 
from  the  pope  ;  therefore  he  is  the  ultimate  tribunal  of 
the  body  that  is  passing  sentence  by  the  grace  of  Al- 
mighty God,  to  all  men,  of  the  truth  for  ever.  Mark  this : 
the  Catholic  Church  has  always  taught  of  necessity  that 
she  cannot  teach  a  lie ;  the  Catholic  Church  has  always 
taught  she  is  bound  to  obey  the  word  of  her  head,  her 
pontiff;  therefore  the  pontiff,  when  he  is  teaching  that 
Church,  cannot  teach  her  a  lie  ;  for  if  he  did  the  Catholic 
Church  would  be  bound  to  accept  the  lie  and  bound  to 
obey.  She  cannot  accept  a  lie,  for  Christ,  her  Lord,  has 
said,  *■'■  I  am  God,  and  the  gates  of  hell  shall  never  prevail 
against  her"  ;  therefore,  though  a  traitor  be  the  head  of 
the  Church,  he  cannot  teach  the  Church  of  God  or  com- 
mand her  to  believe  a  lie. 

Every  state,  my  friends,  every  nation,  has  its  ultimate 
tribunal  from  which  there  is  no  appeal.  For  instance,  if 
you  go  to  law  with  a  man  in  England  or  in  Ireland,  and 
the  judges  decide  against  you,  you  can  appeal  to  a  higher 


88  Tee  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX, 

court ;  and  if  a  higher  court  give  it  against  you,  you  can 
appeal  to  the  House  of  Lords  ;  and  if  the  House  of  Lords 
are  against  you,  you  are  bound  to  submit — there  is  no 
other  appeal.  And  so  here  in  the  United  States.  But  if 
the  Almighty  God  establishes  upon  earth  an  arbiter  that 
never  could  act  unjustly^  then  you  would  be  obliged  to 
say,  "  The  decision  must  be  just,  I  have  no  appeal  from  it." 
Now,  God  says  that  the  Catholic  Church  can  never  believe 
a  lie  or  teach  a  lie,  and  the  Catholic  Church  is  bound  by 
the  decision  of  the  pope,  and  there  is  no  appeal  from  it, 
and,  therefore,  she  believes  she  cannot  tell  a  lie.  This  is 
the  first  attribute  of  the  pope.  Now,  consider  this,  my 
fiiends :  infallibility,  impossibility  of  teaching  a  lie,  im- 
possibility of  making  a  mistake  in  the  matter  of  doctrine, 
is  the  grandest  prerogative  of  the  pope  in  the  Universal 
Church,  and  thus  it  is,  you  see,  why  it  happens  that  this 
brings  him  so  near  to  the  Almighty  God  that,  before  him, 
as  he  stands  there — as  the  head  of  the  Church — all  the  rest 
of  mankind  dwindle  into  nothing.  He  stands  there  and 
he  speaks  ;  he  says  to  the  Church :  "  Hear  me,  O  Church 
of  Jesus  Christ,  hear  me  I"  and  the  whole  of  the  Church 
says:  "I  will  hear  what  my  ruler  speaks  to  me."  The 
Infallible  Church  bows  down  before  him  and  says  :  "  Speak 
thou,  for  the  Church,  thy  servant,  hears."  He  speaks, 
and  the  moment  he  opens  his  lips  with  dogmatic  utte- 
rance I  no  longer  see  in  him  a  man,  but  I  see  reflected 
the  infallible  light  of  God,  and  hear  the  word  of  Jesus 
Christ  on  his  lips,  in  the  word  of  which  it  is  written : 
"  Heaven  and  earth  shall  pass  away,  but  my  words  shall 
never  pnss  away."  It  is  really  awful  to  consider  a  man 
invested  with  so  much  of  the  attributes  of  God. 

The  second  great  official  attribute  of  the  pope  is  su- 
preme authority  over  cardinals,  archbishops,  bishops, 
priests,  laymen,  and  every  other  man  that  professes  the 
Catholic  doctrines. 

The  pope  exercises  unlimited  authority  in  religious 
matters — remember,  I  say  in  religious  matters — in  spiritual 
matters  we  are  all  bound  to  obey  him,  the  highest  dignita- 


The  PoNiJFiCATE  OF  Pius  IX.  89 

ry  of  tlie  Cliarcli.  The  moment  a  man  contradicts  a  word 
of  the  pope,  or  rebels  against  it,  be  he  bishop  or  priest, 
not  of  course  in  the  essence  of  his  ordination,  but  in  the 
legitimacy  of  its  exercise,  he  is  an  absolute  heretic,  and 
goes  out  from  the  Church.  He  may  be  the  most  learned 
man  in  the  world,  the  greatest  professor,  a  man  of  the 
greatest  popularity,  wielding  a  whole  people,  and  shaping 
their  destinies  ;  at  that  moment  there  is  an  end  to  him. 
Not  a  man  amongst  us — the  humblest  Catholic  in  the 
world — will  touch  him  or  have  any  more  to  say  to  him. 

N"ow,  in  order  to  have  these  official  attributes,  you  can 
easily  imagine  that  the  Almighty  God,  who  guides  that 
election  of  the  head  of  the  Church,  wiU  select  a  great  man, 
a  man  whose  sanctity  of  life,  whose  purity  of  heart,  whose 
devotion  to  the  altar  and  the  Church  will  in  some  degree 
fit  him  for  that  magnificent  dignity.  And,  in  truth,  the 
proof  of  this  lies  in  the  fact  that  although  we  have  had 
a  succession  of  hundreds  of  popes,  going  through  the  ages 
of  history  side  by  side  with  their  contemporaries,  though 
many  of  them  haxi  their  faults,  and  though  many  of  them 
committed  sins,  yet  taken  in  the  whole  they  are  as  far  be- 
yond the  kings  and  emperors  in  sanctity  and  purity  of 
life,  in  education  and  grandeur  of  character,  as  they,  the 
kings,  were  beyond  other  men  in  imperial  power.  In  that 
long  roll  of  saints  and  martyrs  I  olaim  that  since  the  day 
Peter  received  the  keys  from  Christ  never  have  those  keys 
been  held  by  a  nobler  character,  by  a  grander  man  than 
the  aged  Pius  IX.    (Great  applause.) 

For  proof  of  this  only  look  over  the  pontificate  with  me 
in  some  of  the  salient  points.  You  know,  my  friends, 
that  it  is  now  six-and-twenty  years  since  Pius  IX.  was 
elected  to  be  the  Pope  and  head  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
He  is  the  only  man  of  all  those  that  succeeded  St.  Peter 
who  has  outlived  the  years  of  Peter  upon  the  pontifical 
throne  of  Rome.  It  was  considered  a  kind  of  proverb  in 
the  Church  that  no  pope  should  live  as  many  years  in 
this  Papacy  as  St,  Peter,  who  lived  twenty-five  years. 
Pins  IX.  was  the  firsi  pope  who  has  outlived  the  years  of 


so  The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX. 

Peter.  I  was  in  Rome  as  a  youth  in  the  first  year  of  the 
pontificate  of  this  man  ;  I  am  speaking  to  you  this  evening, 
not  of  things  I  have  read  in  books,  or  that  I  have  heard 
from  other  men,  I  am  speaking  of  a  country  in  which  I 
have  lived  the  best  years  of  my  life,  of  Italy,  and  the  city 
of  Rome.  I  am  speaking  of  the  things  I  have  seen  and 
judged  of  with  my  own  eyes  and  with  my  own  mind.  I 
saw  in  1847  in  Rome  a  young  man  whose  hau'  was  black 
as  the  raven's  wing;  his  eye  was  bright  with  the  com- 
mingled beauty  of  the  pure  soul  that  shone  through  it,  in  the 
manly  vigor  of  his  youth,  erect  in  form — for  tliis  man  was 
educated  in  his  youth  for  a  soldier — stately,  kingly — more 
than  kingly  even  in  his  material  appearance ;  he  seemed 
a  man  every  inch  fit  to  be  a  ruler  of  his  fellow-men,  with 
a  conformation  and  a  form  indeed  where  the  very  God  liad 
seemed  to  set  the  seal  and  give  the  world  assurance  of  a 
man.  And  in  that  day,  when  my  young  eye,  fresh  from 
the  green  isle  of  Erin,  full  of  Irish  faith,  of  Iiish  love,  as 
I  looked  with  a  timid  glance  on  the  Vicar  of  Christ  in 
that  day,  he  was  surrounded  by  the  plaudits  of  the  Roman 
Italian  people.  The  whole  world  echoed  in  praises  of 
Pius  IX.  The  king  of  Italy,  the  archdukes  of  Italy,  the 
kings  of  the  various  nations  of  Europe  were  loud  in  their 
praises  of  the  new  Poj)e.  Even  in  America  the  echoes  of 
his  praise  were  caught  up — (applause) — and  proclaimed  by 
the  most  eloquent  tongue  of  America's  last  though  not 
least  of  statesmen — by  the  tongue  of  him  over  whose  grave 
the  nation  is  weeping  to-day.  (Renewed  applause.)  Why 
did  they  praise  him  ?  Ah  !  my  friends,  they  praised  him 
for  the  act  by  which  be  began  his  pontificate,  which  showed 
the  genius  and  character  of  this  noble  mind. 

When  he  came  to  the  throne  there  had  been  trouble 
for  years  in  Italy,  and  he  found  many  of  the  Italian  peo- 
ple, his  own  subjects,  languishing  in  iirison  for  their  rebel- 
lion or  attempts  at  revolution,  and  for  their  unquiet  dispo- 
sitions. He  found  that  many  of  them  were  in  exile,  some 
living  in  Paris,  some  in  London,  and  some  here  in  Ameri- 
ca.   What  was  the  first  act  of  the  new  Pontiff  \    The  mo 


The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  91 

ment  the  tiara  was  on  Ms  head  and  the  sceptre  of  his 
apostolic  reign  was  in  his  hand,  the  moment  he  spoke  as  a 
monarch  the  first  words  were  :  "  Open  these  gates  and  let 
them  out.  Come  back,  you  exiles  in  every  foreign  land. 
Come  back  to  your  own  blue  sky  and  sunny  soil.  Come 
back  to  the  bosom  of  Italy.  1  am  not  so  much  your  king 
as  your  father.  I  will  trust  myself  to  the  love,  to  the 
gratitude,  and  to  the  affection  of  the  people."  (Applause.) 
This  act  I  witnessed.  I  saw  the  exiles  return  and  bathe 
the  hand  of  their  liberator  with  their  grateful  tears.  I  saw 
the  eyes  of  the  little  children  whose  fathers  came  back  to 
them  from  out  the  dungeons  and  the  prisons,  rejoicing 
under  the  smile  of  the  man  whose  hand  had  unbarred 
those  prison-gates. 

The  whole  world  rejoiced,  but  Pius  IX.  was  destined 
to  know  the  vanity  and  the  folly  of  human  popularity. 
Oh !  thrice  foolish  is  the  man  who  would  build  a  house,  or 
his  life,  or  his  soul,  on  such  frail,  sandy  foundations  as  the 
applause  and  plaudits  of  men.  Thrice  befooled  is  he  that 
grasps  for  such  glory,  for  God  will  permit  him,  even  in  this 
world,  to  outlive  the  breath  of  his  passing  fame.  And 
unless  he  has  built  his  hopes,  his  reputation,  his  character, 
his  soul,  on  some  more  solid  and  unshaken  foundation, 
then  all  will  crumble  to  ruin,  and  the  aged  man  will  live  to 
weep  over  the  words  of  praise  that  resounded  in  his  ear  in 
thunder- tones  from  the  plaudits  of  men.  That  word  is 
like  the  morning  summer  wind,  that  moves  the  foliage  of 
the  acacia-tree,  then  passes  away  to  salute  some  other  hill- 
side and  refresh  some  other  field. 

Pius  knew  it.  I  saw  him  silent  and  unmoved.  He  saw 
and  recognized  it,  even  as  my  young  eye  did  the  grandeur 
of  that  character,  because  of  the  depth  of  his  humility,  for 
men  were  disposed  to  raise  him  higher  and  higher  in  popu- 
lar estimation,  and  cried  out:  "He  was  the  saviour  of 
men  !  There  never  was  such  a  pontiff  on  that  throne."  I 
saw,  as  the  shouts  of  their  applause  grew  louder,  that  the 
object  of  that  applause  went  down  deeper,  visibly  deeper, 
in  the  depths  of  his  own  personal  nothingness  and  humi- 


92  The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX. 

lity,  humbling  himself  before  God  ;  then  was  I  reminded, 
looking  upon  him,  of  the  word  of  the  royal  prophet  of 
Israel.  "I  swear,"  he  said,  "that  the  more  the  Lord,  my 
God,  shall  lift  me  up  before  His  people  the  more  will  I 
humble  myself,  and  will  cast  myself  down  before  Him." 
That  humility  came  in  order  to  preserve  him,  for  if  the 
miin  had  built  on  the  foundations  of  his  splendid  character 
and  the  passing  praise  of  the  hour,  he  would  have  crum- 
bled to  ruin,  and  his  heart  would  have  broken  under  the 
reverses  that  God  sent  to  him.  In  a  few  years  the  same 
people  that  cried  his  name  with  acclamation  on  that  occa- 
sion turned  against  him,  and  demanded  entrance  with 
their  cannons  at  his  palace-gate,  that  he  should  meet  a 
revolutionary  principle,  inconsistent  with  his  position  and 
inconsistent  with  their  own  salvation  and  happiness,  and 
the  ungrateful  children  whom  the  Holy  Father  had 
brought  forth  from  their  prison-houses,  whom  he  had 
recalled  from  the  land  of  their  exUe,  made  use  of  the 
liberty  he  gave  them  to  drive  him  into  exile. 

Then  came  the  second  great  trial  in  his  life.  A  few 
years  ago  a  Catholic  servant-girl  in  a  Jewish  family,  in 
Bologna,  took  a  little  chUd,  newly  bom,  and  baptized  him 
secretly,  without  telling  the  parents.  Now,  my  friends, 
you  must  know  that  the  Catholic  Church  does  not  allow 
this.  The  Catholic  Church  teaches  two  things :  first  of  all, 
it  teaches  as  to  divine  faith  that  by  baptism  the  chUd  thus 
baptized  becomes  the  brother  or  sister  of  Jesus  Christ,  in- 
corporated in  him  by  divine  grace,  appropriated  to  God, 
is  a  child  of  God.  That  little  child  that  was  bom  was  the 
child  of  Adam,  the  chUd  of  sin.  "We  are  all  born  chil- 
dren of  wrath,"  says  St.  Paul.  It  is  an  article  of  Catholic 
faith.  The  water  of  baptism  touches  the  child's  head,  and 
the  affiliation  passes  away,  and  that  little  child  becomes  a 
child  of  God.  The  Catholic  Church  teaches  the  moment 
that  child  is  baptized  it  becomes  a  member  of  the  Church 
of  God  ;  consequently  He  grasps  that  little  one  and  asserts 
His  claim  upon  it. 

The  Catholic  Church  teaches,  on  the  other  hand,  that 


The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  93 

the  parents  have  a  right  over  the  child,  and  if  the  parents 
are  inlidels  or  Jews,  and  if  they  refuse  to  have  their  child 
baptized,  the  Church  does  not  coerce  ;  the  Church  respects 
the  parents'  right,  and  says,  "Although  I  come  into  this 
world  to  spread  the  kingdom  of  God,  still,  if  the  father 
and  mother  refuse  it  for  their  child,  I  must  respect  their 
rights."  That  is  the  Catholic  doctrine.  Therefore  the 
Church  says,  "  If  any  one  baptizes  the  child  of  a  Jew  or  an 
infidel  without  the  parents'  consent,  that  person  is  guilty 
of  a  grievous  sin ' '  ;  nay,  more,  the  Church  threatens  such 
a  person  with  her  censure  of  excommunication. 

The  servant-girl  in  question  committed  a  grievous  sin, 
and  fell  under  the  censure  of  the  Catholic  Church,  but  the 
Catholic  Church  had  to  acknowledge  the  fact  that  the 
child  was  baptized.  What  followed  from  this  ?  It  follow- 
ed that  the  Catholic  Church  was  obliged  to  ask  the  parents 
of  the  child  to  bring  it  up  a  Christian,  because  he  was  bap- 
tized a  Christian.  The  parents  refused,  and  Pius  IX.  was 
the  temporal  sovereign,  and  these  Jews  were  his  subjects  ; 
and  also  as  the  head  of  the  Church  Pius  IX.  was  obliged, 
by  the  doctrines  of  the  Catholic  Church  and  by  her  dis- 
cipline, to  secure  to  that  child  a  Christian  education  until 
he  was  seven  years  old,  and  could  decide  for  himself 
whether  he  would  continue  to  be  a  Christian  or  go  back  to 
the  religion  of  his  parents.  The  parents  refused,  and  Pius 
IX.  was  obliged,  of  necessity,  to  place  the  child  under  the 
care  of  a  Christian  teacher  until  the  hour  arrived  to  tell 
him,  "You  were  baptized  a  Christian  secretly.  The  person 
who  did  it  interfered  with  your  parents'  right  for  a  time, 
but  does  not  interfere  with  their  rights  for  the  time  to 
come.     Will  you  be  a  Christian  ? " 

The  child  said,  "I  wish  to  be  a  Christian  and  a  priest"  ; 
and  a  priest  he  is  to-day ;  I  knew  him  in  Rome.  (Ap- 
plause.) The  Jewish  father  and  mother  appealed  to  the 
different  nations  in  Europe,  and  England  among  them 
sent  word  to  Pius  that  that  child  should  be  brought  up 
a  Jew.  He  said,  "I  cannot  bring  up  the  child  a  Jew.  The 
child  is  a  Christian ;  how  can  a  Christian  become  a  Jew  ? " 


94  The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX. 

" Then  give  back  the  child,"  they  said,  "to  his  parents." 
"  I  cannot  do  it,"  he  answered  ;  "they  will  bring  him  up 
a  Jew.  But  when  that  child  comes  to  the  hour  of  reason 
he  may  go  back  to  them,  if  he  likes  ;  they  may  see  him, 
and  love  him,  and  nourish  him.  I  will  leave  him  with 
them,  provided  they  give  him  his  choice,  and  let  him  be  a 
Christian,  if  the  grace  of  baptism  educate  him  in  that 
direction."  They,  would  not  do  it ;  they  said,  "  We  want 
to  make  him  a  Jew" — a  personal  enemy  of  God,  in  whom 
he  was  baptized.  France  and  England  threatened  to  send 
their  fleets  to  bombard  our  cities — "We  will  drive  you 
out  of  Rome."  The  old  Father  says,  "You  may  do  it ;  I 
cannot  help  that.  You  may  do  more  than  that — you  may 
pluck  this  heart  out  of  my  body,  cut  off  this  head,  shed 
every  drop  of  blood  in  my  veins,  but  there  is  one  thing 
you  cannot  do,  and  I  cannot  do,  and  that  is,  betray  Jesus 
Christ  by  giving  up  that  child.  Non  possumus^''^  he 
answered,  "I  cannot  do  it."  He  did  not  say,  "I  do  not 
wish  to  do  it.  I  must  not  do  it."  He  says,  "I  cannot  do 
it."  I  assert  that  the  Non  possumus  of  Pius  IX.  are  the 
grandest  words  that  ever  came  from  the  lips  of  man. 

Those  who  were  not  Catholics  did  not  understand  the 
nature  of  baptism.  By  baptism  we  become  one  with 
Christ ;  by  baptism  we  become  members  of  the  Church  of 
Christ.  All  those  non-Catholics  did  not  understand  it. 
He  said  to  them,  "You  make  the  case  your  own";  and 
if  there  are  any  here  who  are  not  Catholics  let  them  just  real- 
ize the  doctrine  of  baptism,  and  tliey  will  see  at  once  that 
the  Pope  could  not  do  anything  else,  and  that  Non  possu- 
mus resounding  from  the  lips  of  Pius  IX.  are  the  grandest 
words  that  can  be  engraven  on  his  tomb.  "  Here  lies  a  man 
whom  the  world  in  its  wisdom  endeavored  to  coerce  into 
sacrificing  the  interests  of  Jesus  Christ  and  His  Churcli, 
and  here  lies  a  man  who  answered :  Non  Possumus — I 
cannot  do  it." 

I  believe,  my  friends,  that  the  case  of  that  child  was  the 
beginning  of  the  troubles  that  I  have  spoken  of  to-day: 
the  loss  of  the  temporal  dominions  of  the  Pope  and  a 


The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX,  ^5 

bloody  revolution.  There  is  a  society  in  Europe  whicli 
has  permeated  through  all  ranks,  in  all  the  nations,  and 
has  found  its  way  into  every  grade  of  society— in  iact,  has 
honeycombed  and  burrowed  completely  the  very  founda- 
tions of  society— every  where  except  in  glorious  Catholic 
Ireland,  and  that  society  is  called  the  Society  of  Freema- 
sons A  great  many  worthy  men  are  entrapped  into  that 
society,  because  they  do  not  know  its  real  meaning.  But 
one  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  European  Masonry  is 
war  against  the  throne  and  war  against  the  altar  of  Uod. 
Against  the  throne  that  war  was  waged  in  the  many  revo- 
lutions that  have  marked  the  end  of  the  last  century  and 
the  middle  of  this  one.  The  war  against  the  altar  has  been 
going  on  in  every  nation  of  Europe,  furious,  persistent, 
terrible,  and  uncompromising— war  since  the  days  that 
Voltaire  wrote  "that  the  last  of  the  kings  should  be 
strangled  with  the  last  of  the  priests." 

Pius  IX.  represented  the  throne  as  temporal  ruler  of 
Rome  and  represented  the  altar  as  head  of  the  Catholic 
Church,    and   the  consequence  is  that  in  the  last   three- 
and-twenty  years  the  combined,  united  efforts  of  this  so- 
ciety of  Masonry  have  been  concentrated  upon  the  one 
power  of  Pius  IX.,   the  representative   of  Jesus  Christ. 
Against  him  even  a  Scribe  and  Pharisee  forgot  their  hatreds 
and   their  differences,   that  they  might  combine  against 
him.     Against  him,  even  as  Pilate   and  Herod  made  up 
their  private  little  differences  and  became  friends  in  order 
that  they  might  combine  against  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  to 
put  Him  to  death,  so  every  other  interest  of  Masonry  was 
considered  secondary,  and  the  power  of  every  element  of 
this  wide-spread  society  was  all  concentrated  in  destroying 
the  power,  and,  if  possible,  in  shedding  the  blood,  of  the 
Sovereign  Pontiff.     For  twenty-three  years  he  has  stood 
serenely  before  them  ;  for  twenty-three  years  he  has  met 
all  their  scoffing.     They  succeeded  in  getting  up  an  unjust 
war  against  him  ;  they  succeeded  in  shedding  the  blood  of 
the  gallant,  true-hearted,  and  the  brave  men  that,  shoulder 
to  shoulder,  stood  round  the  old  man's  throne,  though. 


96  Tee  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX. 

tliey  were  but  one  to  a  thousand.  Yet  still  they  fought 
like  men,  and,  blessed  be  God  !  Ireland's  aim  and  the  most 
faithful  of  her  sons  were  around  him.  (Applause.)  They 
succeeded  in  robbing  and  in  plundering  the  defenceless 
man  of  the  last  square  rood  of  his  inheritance,  and  en- 
deavored to  bring  down  his  white  hairs  in  sorrow,  anguish, 
and  despair  to  the  grave. 

Worst  of  all,  against  him  to-day — a  sad  prisoner  in  the 
abandoned  hall  of  the  Vatican — they  are  maldng  malicious 
charges — ay,  false  as  hell.  They  published  in  Italy,  and 
reproduced  in  other  lands,  their  books  and  other  pamph- 
lets— against  what,  do  you  think?  Against  the  moral 
character  of  Pius  IX. — a  man  whose  reputation  is  as  stain- 
less as  the  untrodden  snow,  a  man  whose  life  has  been  be- 
fore the  world  from  his  earliest  youth  to  his  extreme  old 
age — the  man  who  has  lived  in  the  face  of  the  whole 
world,  the  man  against  whom  his  bitterest  enemy  cannot 
breathe  the  word  of  slander.  This  is  the  man  whose  char- 
acter they  are  trying  to  destroy,  after  they  have  destroyed 
his  temporal  power.  But  what  wonder  ?  When  the  Son 
of  God  was  nailed  to  the  cross  was  He  not  there  expressly 
charged  as  being  a  seducer  of  the  people  and  a  malefactor 
and  blasphemer  against  God  ?  Surely  the  servant  cannot 
expect  better  treatment  than  the  Master.  And  yet,  my 
friends,  if  we  go  a  little  deeper,  passing  from  these  exter- 
nal agencies  that  act  upon  him,  passing  from  his  exterior 
character  as  the  head  of  the  Church — what  a  magnificent 
man  he  is  !  As  I  once  heard  an  old  woman  in  Ireland  say, 
and  she  expressed  the  very  mind  of  the  Church:  "  Father, 
dear,  I  always  believed  in  the  Pope,  but  I  never  loved  him 
so  dearly  as  I  do  now,  because  he  has  declared  that  the 
Mother  of  God  was  conceived  without  sin."  This  is  the 
mind  of  the  Church  ;  for  the  great  heart  of  the  Catholic 
Spouse  of  Jesus  Christ  enlarges  itself  in  love  to  him 
whom  God  gave  the  grace  and  the  fair  privilege  of 
declaring  Mary's  immaculate  conception.  Upon  that 
love,  almost  miraculously  singular,  Pius  IX.  has  sus- 
tained himself  up  to  this  day,  and  will  sustain  himself 


The  Poktificate  of  Pius  IX,  97 

until  his  loving  heart  has  passed  from  us  to  an  honored 
sepulchre. 

I  love  him  not  only  as  a  Catholic,  because  he  has  pro- 
claimed the  immaculate  conception  of  Mary,  my  Mother; 
I  love  him  noi  only  as  a  priest,  because  by  his  latest  de- 
fence of  the  dogmatic  decision  of  the  Church  of  God  he 
has  secured  to  me  for  ever  and  for  ever  the  lights  that 
never  can  pale,  for  the  guiding  voice  that  no  man  can  con- 
tradict, for  the  security  and  certainty  of  our  faith  ;  but  I 
love  him  as  an  Irishman,  because,  in  the  midst  of  his  sor- 
rows and  of  his  troubles,  he  had  time  to  think  of  the  fideli- 
ty and  the  love  of  the  Irish  people  for  their  holy  religion  ; 
and  he  was  the  first  pontiff  that  ever  rewarded  an  Irish- 
man in  a  grand  and  royal  manner.     (Applause.) 

Other  popes  have  been  accused  of  caring  little  about 
Ireland.  One  of  them  has  been  accused  of  caring  so  little 
about  Ireland  as  to  throw  it  into  the  hands  of  Henry  II.  of 
England,  sayiug  to  him,  "Take  it,  if  you  like  it."  But, 
thanks  be  to  God  I  I  have  lived  to  see  that  proved  to  be  a 
lie.  (Applause.)  Mr.  Froude,  whatever  he  takes  home 
from  America,  will  take  home  one  thing  with  him,  and 
that  is  a  document  from  an  Irish  bishop — the  Bishop  of 
Ossory — that  I  think  he  will  not  be  able  to  get  over.  And 
that  document  proves  to  demonstration  that  no  Pope  of 
Rome  ever  gave  Ireland  to  England.  (Renewed  applause.) 
That  the  domination  that  has  been  carried  out  through 
blood  and  injustice  was  begun  in  perjury  and  in  lying 
has  now  become  a  matter  of  history.  And  I  thank  God 
for  it,  because  it  ha  swiped  out  of  the  mind  of  many  an  Irish- 
man the  uncomfortable  feeling  that  a  pope  thought  so  lit- 
tle of  ou::  native  land.  Thanks  be  to  God,  that  day  never 
dawned,  and  never  wiU.     (Applause.) 

Pius  IX.  gave  to  the  Irish  Church  her  first  cardinal — 
that  is  to  say,  he  gave  to  the  Irish  a  voice  in  all  councils 
of  the  Church.  When  the  question  comes  to  selecting  a 
pope  as  the  head  of  the  Catholic  Church — when  the  ques- 
tion comes  of  bringing  out  three  or  four  men,  without  any 
prior  selection,  asking  the  Holy  Spirit  of  God,   "Is  this 


S8  The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX 

the  anointed  that  is  before  Thee,  O  Spirit  of  Truth  ?'* 
that  is  the  highest  council  that  can  be  upon  this  earth, 
and  for  fifteen  hundred  years  every  nation  has  been  asked 
to  join  in  that  important  question.  Yet  Ireland,  faithful, 
suffering,  never  had  been,  until  Pius  IX.  said  to  an  Irish- 
man, "Take  thy  place,  O  child  of  a  martyred  race  !  among 
the  princes  of  the  Church  of  God,  and  thou  shalt  be 
amongst  those  that  shall  ask  the  question  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  Who  shall  guide  this  Church?"  And  if  the  an- 
swer should  ever  come,  "The  son  of  Erin  !"  then  the  son 
of  Erin  has  tlie  right  to  wear  the  Roman  tiara.  (Ap- 
plause.) 

And  in  making  the  selection  he  chose  a  man  whom  I 
have  the  honor  and  the  privilege  of  knowing  intimately 
and  well.  I  have  lived  under  his  jurisdiction  for  many 
a  year.  I  have  studied  his  spirit,  and  I  will  say  this — I 
say  it  from  the  conviction  of  my  heart — that  in  raising 
Paul  CuUen,  the  archbishop,  to  the  dignity  and  the  gran- 
deur of  a  cardinalship  Pius  IX.  laid  his  hand  upon  the 
head  of  as  true  and  as  loving  a  son  of  Ireland  as  ever 
lived.  (Prolonged  applause.)  Some  deny  this  among 
us,  a  privilege  that  we  claim  to  ourselves  ;  but  I  do  say 
this  again — that  if  love  for  one's  native  land  ever  burned 
pure  and  bright  in  the  heart  of  man  it  burns  in  the  heart 
of  Cardinal  Cullen.     (Renewed  and  prolonged  applause.) 

He  selected  a  man  whom  he  knew  would  do  honor  to 
the  land  of  his  birth,  and  would  fitly  represent  amongst 
the  cardinals  of  Rome  and  the  representative  princes  of 
the  Church  the  land  which  once  bore  the  title  of  the  "isl- 
and of  scholars  as  well  as  of  saints."  I  have  studied  the 
character  of  the  eminent  personage  of  whom  I  speak,  and 
I  have  failed  to  decide  in  my  own  mind,  from  a  minute, 
familiar  examination  of  him — I  have  never  been  able  to  de- 
cide which  was  the  greater,  the  vastness  of  his  ecclesi- 
astical knowledge  or  the  humility  of  his  pure  heart  and 
spirit. 

Honors  have  been  worthily  showered  upon  him  ;  he  has 
borne  them  with  a  humility  corresponding  with  the  great- 


The  Pontificate  of  Pius  IX,  99 

ness  to  which  God  has  lifted  him  up.  In  the  last  Council 
of  Rome  it  was  the  honor  and  glory  of  Ireland  that  our 
cardinal  stood  forth  acknowledged  one  of  the  greatest 
theologians,  one  of  the  first  and  wisest  men,  one  of  the 
deepest  thinkers,  and  one  of  the  coolest  and  best  heads  of 
the  age.     (Applause.) 

For  all  this  I  thank  Pope  Pius  IX.  I  honor  the  aged 
man  who  so  worthily  fills  the  highest  throne  of  earth  ;  I 
honor  him  more  than  if  I  saw  him  crowned  with  the  thrice 
resplendent  tiara  of  human  praise,  human  glory,  and  hu- 
man power.  Oh !  I  honor  him  in  his  old  age.  For  even  as 
Peter  was  imprisoned  in  Rome,  so  Pius  is  imprisoned  to- 
day in  Rome,  and  the  crown  of  empire  has  fallen  from  his 
head  ;  but  the  crown  of  thorns  is  surmounted  by  the  high- 
er crown  of  spiritual  dominion  which  God  put  on  the  head 
of  Peter,  and  which  no  man  shall  ever  pluck  from  the 
brows  of  Peter's  successors.  I  hallow  him.  I  go  back 
with  Joy  to  the  past,  when  the  occasion  was  given  to  me  of 
beholding  him  and  receiving  his  benediction,  when  his 
fatherly  smile  was  bestowed  on  the  Irish  friar.  I  hallow 
him  in  the  hall  of  my  memory.  I  have  seen  him  in  glory  ; 
I  have  seen  him  in  sorrow  ;  but  I  hallow  him  with  a  louder 
voice  as  I  behold  him  in  the  light  of  that  future  which 
my  faith  reveals  to  me,  coming  forth  from  out  his  prison- 
house  to  ascend  his  throne  once  more  crowned  with  the 
honor  and  glory  of  which  the  world  cannot  longer  deprive 
him,  coming  forth  the  representative  of  Eternal  Power  as 
well  as  of  Eternal  Justice,  to  wield  once  more  in  undis- 
puted sway  the  peaceful  sceptre  of  God's  designs  in 
nations,  and  with  an  acknowledged  royal  hand  to  point 
out  to  all  the  people  of  the  united  world  the  path  to  free- 
dom here  and  glory  in  the  world  to  come.  (Prolonged  ap- 
plause.) 


Eulogy  of  the  Late  Cardinal  Barnabo. 


In  this  sermon,  preached  in  the  cathedral  of  Dublin,  Father  Burke  has  por- 
trayed the  very  remarkable  life  of  a  wonderful  and  holy  man.  The  les- 
son -we  may  learn  from  his  life  is  that,  no  matter  what  trials  fall  to  our 
lot,  if  we  really  desire  in  our  hearts  to  do  so,  we  may  "fight  the  good 
fight,  and  keep  the  faith." 

"  I  have  fougbt  the  good  fight ;  I  have  finished  my  course  ;  I  have  kept  the 
faith,  and  I  know  there  is  reserved  for  me  a  crown  of  justice  which  my 
Lord  will  give  me,  for  He  is  a  just  God."— St.  Paul,  II.  Epistle  to  Timo- 
thy, iii.  7-8. 

/CONSIDER,  dearly  beloved,  who  he  was  who  spoke  these 
^  words.  He  was  one  of  the  highest  of  the  apostles, 
though  not  the  chief — the  apostle  familiarly  styled  the 
Apostle  of  the  Gentiles.  He  carried  the  announcement  of 
the  Word  of  God  amongst  nations  wlio  never  heard  the 
name  ol  God  in  the  blindness  of  their  idolatry  ;  he  con- 
verted idolaters  to  God,  whom  they  confessed  they  knew 
not,  and  in  every  tongue  proclaimed  the  cross  of  tlie  risen 
Saviour.  A  remarkable  man  truly  was  this  great  apostle 
and  teacher  of  the  Gentiles.  He  was  not  the  head  of  the 
Church  ;  he  was  under  the  obedience  and  under  the  supre- 
macy of  Peter,  the  Great*  Pontiff,  biit  to  Peter  he  was 
bound  by  ties  of  sublime  love  and  endearment.  Although 
he  was  not  the  head  of  the  Church,  yet  he  speaks  of  him- 
self as  being  burdened  with  the  care  of  all  the  Church. 
And  now,  drawing  nigh  the  close  of  life,  he  says  :  "I have 
fought  the  good  fight ;  I  have  finished  my  course  ;  I  have 
kept  the  faith."  Well  might  he  in  all  humility  boast 
that  he  had  fought  the  good  fight,  for  he  had  conquered 
all  his  adversaries  during  that  long-continued  struggle  from 
the  day  when  his  eyes  first  opened  to  behold  the  vision  of 

100 


Eulogy  of  the  Laie  Cardinal  Barnabo.  101 

Ms  Lord,  and  which  only  ended  when  he  yielded  up 
his  life.  His  life  was  one  continued  trial  of  perils, 
which  he  himself  tells  us.  He  was  in  perils  on  sea  and 
in  perils  on  land  from  open  enemies  and  from  false  breth- 
ren. Yet  his  brave  heart  never  knew  one  moment's  fear  of 
duty. 

"  I  have  finished  my  course,"  he  said,  and  assuredly  a 
noble  course  was  that  drawing  to  a  close.  The  nations  of 
the  Gentiles  had  heard  his  voice.  He  sent  his  disciples  in- 
to far-distant  lands,  and  every  one  who  heard  him  bowed 
down  to  the  name  and  glory  of  Jesus  Christ.  "I  have 
kept  the  faith,"  well  might  he  exclaim.  Not  only 
have  I  kept  it  but  I  have  spread  it  abroad.  The  faith 
not  only  remained  to  him  in  all  its  integrity,  strength,  and 
purity,  but  remained  in  him  a  light  burning  to  the  illumi- 
nation of  the  Gentiles,  that  went  forth  from  him  unto  peo- 
ples who  from  the  first  days  of  their  history  had  walked 
in  darkness  and  the  shadow  of  death,  called  to  the  admir- 
able light  of  God.  Consequently  he  looked  forward  to  his 
crown  with  all  the  confidence  of  Christian  hope  when  he 
said :  "I  know  there  is  reserved  for  me  a  crown  of  Justice 
which  my  Lord  will  give  me  on  that  day,  for  He  is  a  just 
Judge" — one  who  will  not  forget  the  labors  of  His  faith- 
ful servant,  who  will  repay  fidelity  with  generosity,  who 
will  reward  those  who  will  give  their  mind,  heart,  life,  and 
strength  to  His  service — to  the  service  of  the  Church,  His 
great  messenger  upon  earth.  The  words  of  the  apostle 
strongly  and  forcibly  apply  to  the  great  prince  of  the 
Church  who  has  been  taken  away  in  the  hour  of  her  deep- 
est sorrow  and  of  her  direst  necessity — a  man  who,  though 
not  head  of  the  Church,  yet,  like  the  apostle,  was  burden- 
ed— the  man  who,  after  the  Supreme  Pontiff,  filled  the 
highest  and  the  great  position  in  the  Christian  world — 
who,  after  the  Supreme  Pontiff,  was  the  guide,  the  father, 
and  the  protector  of  the  holy  Church,  lifted  up  into  the 
highest  councils,  not  by  any  craving  or  prompting  of  am- 
bition, but  by  the  mere  force  and  necessity  of  a  holy  life, 
a  great  mind,  and  a  devotedness  such  as  the  Catholic 


102  EULOQT  OF  THE  LaTB   CARDINAL  BaRNABO. 

Church  alone  can  create  in  every  rank  of  her  hierarchy, 
from  the  most  exalted  to  the  humblest. 

"I  have  fought  the  good  fight,"  says  the  apostle. 
Now,  blessed  are  they  who,  caUed  by  the  Almighty  God  to 
serve  Him  in  His  sanctuary,  find  no  let  or  hindrance  to 
their  entering  into  the  holy  place  of  God,  whose  youthful 
steps  are  surrounded  by  the  blessing  of  sweetness,  who 
live  in  tranquil  times,  and  in  the  midst  of  undisturbed  tra- 
ditions of  holiness  ;  but  more  blessed  is  the  man  who, 
gifted  by  divine  wisdom  and  divine  fortitude,  in  the  days 
of  his  early  youth  is  able  to  fight  his  way  into  the  sanc- 
tuary of  God,  so  that,  when  he  enters  as  a  young  Levite, 
it  is  not  merely  in  the  promise  and  the  hope  of  what  is  to 
come,  but  a  victor  crowned,  and  with  the  maturity  of  the 
cross  already  on  him.  Such  was  the  entry  into  the  sanc- 
tuary of  God  of  this  great  priest  for  whom  the  holy  Catho- 
lic Church  is  putting  up  its  prayers  in  sorrow  and  tears  to- 
day. 

A  traveller  landing  from  a  strange  country  on  the 
shores  of  the  Adriatic,  wending  his  way  to  the  Eternal 
City,  descends  the  slopes  of  the  Apennines  into  one  of  the 
loveliest  valleys  that  bloom  on  earth — the  Vale  of  Umbria 
— enriched  by  all  the  beauty  of  nature,  and  with  every- 
thing that  gladdens  and  strengthens  the  heart  of  man,  and 
rich  also  in  the  traditions  of  the  greatest  artist  and  the 
greatest  saint  of  the  Church  of  God — St.  Francis  of  Assi- 
sium.  Its  olive  groves  are  familiar  with  his  prayers,  its 
city  with  his  miracles  and  holiness,  and  there  in  this 
city — the  ancient  city  of  Foligno — Alexander  Barnabo  was 
born  of  noble  Italian  parents.  Reared  up  during  the 
earliest  days  of  his  childhood  in  all  the  traditions  of  Ca- 
tholic faith  and  in  all  the  traditions  of  sanctity,  he  seem- 
ed from  the  beginning  a  child  of  benediction  and  promise. 
At  this  time  a  mighty  revolution  raised  its  head — a  mighty 
despotism  had  raised  its  head,  overshadowing  all  Europe 
— a  revolution  the  most  terrible  that  the  earth  ever  wit- 
nessed. And  a  dictator  arose — a  mighty  universal  con- 
queror, who  crushed  not  only  all  tlie  nations,  but  laid 


Eulogy  of  the  Late  Cardinal  Barnabo.         103 

impious  hands  within  the  sanctuary  on  the  sacred  person 
of  the  vicar  of  Jesus  Christ.  These  were  days  when  it 
was  not  easy  for  the  youth  and  Christianity  of  France  and 
Italy  to  enter  the  sanctuary,  and  the  more  distinguished 
and  the  more  noble  the  gi-eater  the  difficulty.  For,  besides 
the  ordinary  obstacles — the  world,  always  tempting  for 
those  of  more  distinguished  birth ;  the  young  blood,  with 
passions  to  be  subdued  and  frozen  into  the  icicle  of  Chris- 
tian purity  by  the  touch  of  divine  grace ;  the  devil,  always 
in  wait,  and  trying  to  turn  aside  every  noble  and  generous 
soul  from  the  service  of  the  sanctuary — besides  these  there 
stood  at  that  gate  the  mighty  conqueror,  the  sword  in  his 
hand,  dripping  with  the  blood  of  nations,  and  seized  on 
the  youth  o£  France  and  Italy,  to  immolate  them  before 
the  altar  of  his  ambition  rather  than  to  permit  them  serve 
the  altar  of  the  true  God. 

The  young  nobleman  of  Foligno  was  taken  away  in 
his  thirteenth  year  from  the  mother  who  loved  him,  forced 
to  go  from  Italy  to  France,  compelled  for  the  time  being  to 
devote  himself  to  study  preparatory  to  a  military  life, 
whilst  his  young  ambition  sought  to  be  inflamed  by  pro- 
mise of  military  glory.  How  sad  to  think  that  one  whose 
ambition  was  like  the  Cure  of  Ars,  who  desired  to  be  per- 
mitted to  live  within  the  sanctuary,  to  be  an  object  even 
the  least  in  the  house  of  his  God,  should  be  denied  that 
privilege !  How  sad  to  think  of  him  dragged  from  the  holy 
tabernacle  of  God !  How  sad  to  see  the  young  Italian 
nobleman,  whose  thoughts  from  early  childhood  were 
directed  to  the  sanctuary,  taken  away  and  carried  under 
the  mighty  shadow  of  the  great  military  dictator !  Like 
the  holy  youth  of  Israel  carried  captive  to  Babylon,  who 
forgot  not  the  God  of  Juda,  so  he  in  the  midst  of  his 
young  companions,  witnessing  their  worldliness  and  all  the 
evil  examples  surrounding  him,  closed  his  ears  to  every 
evil  maxim,  and  preserved  for  his  God  the  immaculate 
purity  of  his  heart  and  hands  unstained  by  the  delile- 
ment  of  sin  and  the  shedding  of  blood.  And  when  the 
inevitable  peace  that  follows  every  war  against  the  Church 


104         Eulogy  of  the  Late  Cardinal  Barnabo. 

of  God  and  leaves  her  triumpliant  came,  and  when  inevi- 
table rain,  sent  by  the  Almighty,  as  He  will  send  on  every 
hand  that  dares  to  lift  itself  against  the  Church — when 
that  ruin  came  like  a  thunderbolt  of  heaven,  and  he  who 
in  those  days  had  done  outrage  and  insult  to  Christ's  Vicar 
was  sent  to  wear  away  his  lonely  heart  on  the  ocean  rock,  the 
young  emancipated  soul  again,  with  all  the  natural  ardor, 
with  all  the  natural  love  which  the  God  of  divine  grace 
had  put  into  his  soul,  sought  his  home  in  the  sanctuary 
and  received  the  priesthood.  To  that  priesthood  he  fought 
his  way  against  every  power  ;  to  that  sanctuary  and  priest- 
hood he  brought  a  holy,  pure  heart,  and  hands  unstained 
by  sin  ;  but  he  brought  also  a  mind  pre-eminently  and 
singularly  gifted  by  God,  and  a  strong,  manly  energy 
which  remained  to  the  last  days  of  his  life,  and  which  ap- 
peared in  his  every  action,  as  if  all  the  energy  of  his 
nature  was  concentrated  in  every  act.  Dearly  beloved,  it 
has  been  said  of  old,  not  only  by  her  children  but  by  her 
enemies,  that  never  was  there  a  power  on  this  earth  tliat 
is  so  quick  to  discover  promise  of  ability,  endowments  of 
soul  and  mind,  energy  of  her  divine  purpose — there  never 
was  a  power  that  so  loved  to  bring  forth  from  its  hidden 
recesses  the  true  gold  of  genius  and  sanctity  as  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church.  And  it  is  little  wonder,  therefore,  that 
the  young  priest  was  soon  a  marked  man  in  the  eyes  of  his 
ecclesiastical  superiors,  as  one  who  could  do,  and  was  will- 
ing to  do,  great  things  for  the  Church  of  God.  To  this 
was  he  called,  laboring  for  his  Creator.  He  sustained  the 
work  to  the  last,  laboring  every  day  of  his  life.  He  died, 
and  he  fought  the  good  fight  in  his  youth  ;  he  had  finished 
his  glorious  course  ;  he  had  kept  the  faith,  and  had  given 
the  faith  to  the  nations,  and  well  might  he  have  said : 
"There  is  reserved  unto  me,  T  know,  a  crown  of  Justice 
wliich  my  Lord  will  give  me,  for  He  is  a  just  God." 

Now,  consider  to  what  this  man  was  called  in  the 
Church  of  God.  We  have  seen,  dearly  beloved,  that  from 
the  beginning  some  of  the  apostles  were  devoted  to  a  mere 
domestic  line  of  apostolicity,  preaching  the  faith  among 


Eulogy  of  the  Late  Cardinal  Barnabo.         105 

the  children  of  Israel  and  the  households  of  Juda  ;  to 
their  own  kith  and  kin  they  proclaimed  the  Gospel, 
bringing  forth,  as  examples,  the  miracles  they  had  wit- 
nessed of  our  Divine  Lord ;  whilst,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  great  apostle  of  the  Oentiles  went  out  to  preach  for 
all — out  to  the  nations,  to  those  who  were  in  utter  dark- 
ness, did  he  go  forth  to  proclaim  in  ev^ry  tongue  the  name 
-of  Jesus  Christ.  Down  to  our  own  time  Rome,  the  centre, 
the  head,  the  heart,  th«  soul  of  Christendom  and  Christi- 
anity, on  which  Christ  our  Lord  lavished  His  particular 
graces — Rome  has  had  marked  out  from  the  beginning  this 
two-fold  character:  a  domestic  legislation  with  its  local 
tribunal  for  the  nations  who  kept  the  faith  ;  but  for  the 
nations  who  fell  away  from  the  faith,  or  who  never  had 
faith,  but  received  it  for  the  first  time,  or  for  nations 
newly  discovered — these  Grentiles,  these  nations  in  which 
the  Church  is  struggling  with  primeval  idolatry  or  ac- 
quired heresy — in  those  countries  where  the  Church  is 
not  acknowledged  at  all,  where  she  has  to  fight  her  way 
without  the  slightest  recognition  save  the  recognition  of 
persecution — for  these  Rome  has  a  special  organization. 
It  is  called  the  Propaganda,  or  the  great  College  for  the 
Propagation  of  the  Faith.  Armed  with  pontifical  power, 
this  tribunal  has  to  direct  the  action  of  the  Church  mili- 
tant in  her  natural  mission — the  great  contest  with  in- 
fidelity and  heresy.  This  great  tribunal,  with  pontifical 
power,  was  intended  to  push  the  work  of  conversion  and 
send  the  light  of  the  Oospel  into  every  land  throughout 
the  earth.  Its  first  mission  begins  where  the  Esquimaux, 
in  the  icy  plains  that  surround  the  North  Pole,  hunt  the 
wild  fox  and  polar  bear,  and  there  it  proclaims  the  name 
of  God  amongst  men  speaking  a  language  no  man  under- 
stands save  the  Catholic  missionary ;  it  proclaims  His 
holy  name  to  southern  latitudes  where  the  shadow  of  man 
is  not  passed,  where  the  vertical  sun  makes  the  land  a 
desert,  where  the  rivers  are  dried  up  ;  it  proclaims  God  to 
the  perpetual  snows  of  Northern  Russia,  and  to  the  coun- 
try around  th'e  Euphrates,  that  sent  from  out  the  rising 


106         Eulogy  of  tee  Late  Cardinal  Babnabo. 

sun  the  Magi,  in  strange  costume,  speaking  strange  words, 
to  look  for  Israel's  God. 

It  proclaims  God  to  the  far  away  West,  beyond  the 
"Father  of  Waters,^'  beyond  the  plains  that  stretch  on 
the  shore  of  the  Pacific  ;  further  stilly  launching  forth  into- 
that  silent  ocean,  amongst  islands  yet  inhabited  by  bar- 
baric tribes,  it  proclaims  His  holy  name,  till  you  come  to 
the  new  continent — Australia.  All  these  vast  territories 
lie  under  the  eye  of  the  Propaganda,  and  their  inhabitants 
look  to  that  great  centre  for  the  light  of  truth,  for  govern- 
ment, guidance,  and  for  that  animated  energy  that  will 
send  forth  missionaries  to  speak  in  every  language  and  in 
every  clime  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  man  who  is 
called  to  preside  over  this  vast  and  mighty  tribunal  is, 
next  to  the  supreme  head  of  the  Church,  tlie  most  impor- 
tant personage  in  the  world.  He  must  be  full  of  wisdom  ; 
he  must  have  the  most  varied  knowledge  for  the  conditions 
of  all  these  various  countries ;  he  must  have  an  energy 
superhuman.  He  lias  four  thousand  bishops  and  as  many 
dioceses  under  him.  They  come  to  him  with  all  their  diffi- 
culties, doubts,  and  dangers.  He  is  the  centre  of  that 
mighty  organization  by  which  the  Church  goes  on,  as  said 
of  her,  destined  until  the  end  of  time,  conquering  and  to 
conquer.  And  to  this  position  of  unexampled  labor  and 
responsibility  was  the  great  and  holy  man  for  whom  we 
have  been  praying  to-day  called,  and,  whether  as  secretary 
or  cardinal  of  the  Propaganda,  he  has  been  for  a  quarter  of 
a  century  the  very  centre  of  that  mighty  system,  and  forth 
from  his  mind,  from  the  zeal  of  his  heart,  from  the  super- 
human natural  energy  of  his  character,  intensified  by  his 
devotion,  came  that  strange  and  wonderful  power  which 
has  made  the  Propaganda  the  real  consolation  of  the 
Church  for  the  last  twenty  years.  A  strange  sight  it  was 
indeed,  that  it  has  been  my  privilege  more  than  once  to 
witness,  to  stand  there  in  the  cardinal's  office  chamber,, 
where  he  receives  the  various  missionaries,  to  see  them — 
the  grave  Oriental  bishop  in  his  goigeous  robes,  gi-and- 
looking  and  kingly,  speaking  of  the  sorrows  and  cares  of 


Eulogy  of  the  Late  Cardinal  Babnabo.         107 

people  who  had  never  been  heard  of  in  this  western  world  ; 
to  see  this  man,  who  had  journeyed  for  months  from  the 
cradle-land  of  the  world.  Outside  the  door  is  a  Jesuit, 
waiting  to  be  heard,  who  has  come  from  the  northern  por- 
tion of  North  America,  whose  eyes  have  for  many  years 
scarcely  seen  anything  but  snow  and  frozen  rivers.  Per- 
haps standing  side  by  side  with  him  is  the  bronzed  and 
embrowned  foreign  missionary  from  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope,  or  the  strange-looking  Chinese  missionary,  who, 
perhaps,  only  escaped  from  prison  to  recount  his  trials, 
and  on  his  return  bear  the  pain  and  tortures  of  those  who 
were  languishing  in  the  cells. 

In  a  word,  a  motley  group  representing  the  universal 
apostolicity  were  there,  and  he,  with  a  patience  that  no- 
thing could  overcome  and  with  an  energy  that  nothing 
could  break  down,  was  answering  all.  For  God  had 
prepared  him  by  his  exile  and  contact  with  the  outer  world 
for  this  mighty  work.  He  acquired  the  widest  knowledge 
and  experience  of  the  locality  of  each  diocese  and  the 
wants  of  each  people.  And  so  he  labored  from  the  morn- 
ing watch  even  until  night,  working,  toiling  as  a  common 
slave  in  the  holy  Church  of  God.  For  him  there  was  no 
rest.  His  work  was  holy.  And  what  was  his  recreation  ? 
The  moment  that  he  could  snatch  an  hour  from  the  labors 
of  the  day  that  hour  was  spent  with  Jesus  Christ  in  the 
Blessed  Sacrament ;  or  he  went  with  humed  steps  to  some 
convent  or  place  where  a  mission  was  going  on  to  instruct 
little  children ;  or  he  went  into  the  confessional,  to  become 
the  victim  of  his  zeal.  Every  one  cared  for  his  mind  and 
heart  except  one,  and  that  one  was  his  own  great  self. 
Well  might  he  say  with  his  daily  breath :  "I  have  finished 
my  course  ! "  What  was  that  course  ?  The  restoration  of 
the  ancient  hierarchy  to  England.  Well  might  Augustine 
and  the  ancient  saints  of  England  bow  down  from  their 
thrones  in  heaven  to  welcome  him  who  restored  in  his 
latter  days  that  magnificent  work  which  heresy  shattered 
to  pieces.     He  restored  the  hierarchy  to  her. 

His  great  mind  went  out  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.    The 


108         Eulogy  of  the  Late  Cardinal  Barnabo. 

American  Church,  from  being  small,  has  become,  under 
his  fostering  care,  one  of  the  grandest  vineyards  in  the 
garden  of  Jesus  Christ.  His  name  was  known  and  vene^ 
rated  by  the  solitary  missionary  out  in  the  Western  plains. 
His  name  was  known  to  the  savage  tribes  of  Indians,  re- 
ceding further  and  further  into  the  wilds  of  Texas  before 
the  advancing  but,  I  regret  to  say,  demoralizing  civilization 
of  the  present  day.  The  sad  announcement  of  his  death 
was  heard  with  grief  on  the  banks  of  the  silent  rivers  by 
Christians  to  whom  the  guidance  and  government  of  the 
great  Barnabo  was  love  and  consolation.  He  established 
the  hierarchy  in  Australia,  far  away  in  the  antipodes,  and 
in  the  ends  of  the  earth  his  name  was  known.  ' '  I  have 
kept  the  faith,"  well  might  he  say  with  his  dying  lij)s.  He 
was  the  centre  of  the  faith  at  that  sacred  place,  Rome — 
Rome,  the  Jerusalem  of  the  new  land  ;  Rome,  sanctified 
above  all  other  places  on  the  earth  ;  Rome,  to  us  all  that 
Jerusalem  was  to  him  of  old  who  said  :  "  If  I  forget  thee, 
O  Jerusalem !  let  my  right  hand  be  forgotten."  His  death 
was  a  calamity  to  the  present  sad  situation  of  the  Church. 
He  was  gifted  with  a  disposition  which  no  adversity  could 
sour,  which  no  persecution  or  difficulty  could  cast  down. 
There  was  in  his  heart  a  fund  of  manly  courage  united  with 
the  highest  form  of  resignation  to  God's  will  which  made 
him  trebly  dear  to  the  great  Pontiff  and  all  the  prefects  of 
the  Propaganda,  who  regarded  him  with  the  tenderest  and 
most  lasting  friendship. 

Oh !  think  of  it :  during  the  last  two  years  of  his  life 
Ms  immense  labors  night  and  day  had  reduced  him  to 
utter  blindness.  Yet  when  the  sight  was  gone  the  eter- 
nal light  of  faith  illuminated  his  soul,  and  every  day 
during  that  blindness,  still  laboring,  he  was  conveyed  to 
the  Vatican,  and  there,  sitting  at  the  feet  of  the  sorrowful 
and  almost  heart-broken  Vicar  of  Jesus  Christ,  chased 
every  depressing  thought  from  the  Pontiff's  heart,  filling 
him  with  joy  in  the  midst  of  his  persecutions  to  see  that 
there  was  one  great  heart  that  bore  the  pains  of  the 
Church's  sorrow  so  lightly,  not,  indeed,  that  he  did  not 


Eulogy  of  tee  Late  Cardinal  Baenabo.  109 

feel  them  keenly,  but  because  his  great  soul  never  lost 
sight  of  that  divine  light  before  him,  just  as  the  pillar  of 
lii-e  before  the  children  of  Israel.  No  matter  how  dark  the 
night  or  how  dreadful  the  thunder,  the  pillar  of  fire,  the 
assurance  of  their  God  that  they  should  coQquer,  was 
before  them. 

Brightly  did  the  lamp  of  faith  burn  before  the  eyes  of 
the  great  servant  until,  in  the  brightness  of  that  light,  he 
could  afford  to  rejoice  even  in  the  darkest  hour  of  the 
Church's  tribulation.  He  has  gone.  We  also  have  our 
great  prelate,  and  we  were  under  his  grand  government. 
We  also,  who  for  three  hundred  years  have  been  daily 
battling  with  every  spirit  of  persecution  for  that  faith 
which  is  our  true  light — we  who  are  in  this  our  day  once 
more  adorning  the  temples  of  our  God  with  more  than 
their  first  splendor — we  were  under  the  care  of  this  great 
man.  He  loved  us  and  our  people.  He  was  as  familiar 
with  the  name  and  history  of  Ireland  as  if  he  were  one  of 
our  own  blood.  He  had  attested  his  love  by  the  earnest 
care  with  which  he  watched  our  interest.  On  the  death  of 
this  great  man,  who  loved  our  people,  the  Irish  heart  felt  a 
pang  of  grief,  for  they  knew  how  he  had  labored  to  obtain 
for  Ireland  the  crowning  dignity  and  blessing  of  her  first 
cardinal,  who,  not  only  as  prelate  and  cardinal  in  Rome, 
but  as  friend  speaking  to  friend,  conquered  every  difficulty 
and  subdued  the  repugnance  which  humility  dictated  in 
the  person  of  our  own  great  prelate.  This  great  cardinal 
rejoiced  with  a  mighty  Joy  when  he  saw  one  of  the  nations 
of  his  Propaganda  crowned  with  the  highest  honor  of  the 
Church.  To-day  prayers  are  offered  up  for  him  all  over 
the  earth.  Although  his  mind  was  great,  his  heart 
greater,  and  his  works  greatest  of  all,  we  can  only  say,  as 
the  apostle  said,  with  the  firmest  hope  and  with  the 
firmest  confidence,  that  there  is  reserved  for  him  a  crown 
of  Justice  and  glory  which  the  Lord,  whom  he  had  served 
so  faithfully,  will  not  deny  him.  That  crown  perhaps  al- 
ready rests  on  his  head,  already  shines  on  his  faithful 
brow,  and  probably  at  this  moment  he  is  laying  before  the 


110         Eulogy  of  the  Late  Cardinal  Barnabo. 

invisible  Head  of  the  Church  the  prayers  and  tears  of  the 
faithful.  But  it  is  still  our  duty — a  duty  dictated  by 
faith,  dictated  most  of  all  by  gratitude  to  him  who  was  the 
lover  of  our  race,  the  great  ecclesiastical  prefect  of  the 
Propaganda — to  send  up  our  prayers  to  heaven  for  the  il- 
lustrious Barnabo,  that  if  perchance  he  may  be  suffering 
now  for  some  trivial  sin  which  might  fall  on  the  soul  of 
the  most  just,  the  Lord  may  hasten  the  time  of  his  de- 
liverance, for  surely  when  that  time  has  arrived  great  is 
the  voice  and  true  the  heart  that  will  plead  in  heaven  for 
the  Church  of  God. 


The  Life  and  Character  of  St.  Dominic. 


The  Calendar  of  the  Saints  contains  no  name  which  shines  brighter,  or  which 
should  be  held  dearer,  than  that  of  St.  Dominic.  In  this  discourse, 
preached  in  the  Dominican  Church  of  St.  Saviour,  Dublin,  on  the  Feast 
of  St.  Dominic,  1877,  Father  Burke  has  given  us  an  interesting  and 
faithful  sketch  of  the  great  saint  in  which  there  is  much  food  for 
meditation. 

JUDGIjSTG  the  heart  of  the  Divine  Saviour  by  His  words 
and  actions,  we  would  find  that  His  heart  was  ab- 
sorbed and  inflamed  with  four  great  loves.  The  first 
passion  of  His  heart  was  His  love  for  His  heavenly  Father, 
for  the  atonement  to  wiiose  justice  and  the  consummation 
of  whose  glory  He  camo  down  to  die  upon  the  earth.  The 
second  love  of  His  heart  was  His  love  for  His  Virgin 
Mother.  With  what  confidence  He  trusted  to  her  tender 
arms  and  with  what  affection  He  clung  to  her  virgin 
bosom  !  He  loved  her  and  He  honored  her  ;  for  it  is  written 
in  law,  Honor  thy  father,  thy  mother,  and  by  God,  the 
Maker  of  the  law,  was  its  precepts  pre-eminently  fulfilled. 
The  third  great  love  of  Jesus'  heart  was  the  love  He  bore 
the  pure  and  holy  Church  which  He  had  established.  His 
zeal  was  for  her  honor  and  glory,  for  the  truth  of  her  doc- 
trine, the  purity  of  her  moral  law,  the  faithfulness  of  her 
children,  the  stateliness  of  her  temples,  the  zeal  and  holi- 
ness of  her  consecrated  ministers,  that  she  should  be  beau- 
tified and  recognized  amongst  men  as  the  spouse  of  God 
and  the  most  glorious  institution  that  ever  existed  on  this 
earth.  After  His  love  for  His  Eternal  Father,  for  His 
Mother,  and  for  His  Church  comes  His  love  for  human  souls. 
He  loved  human  souls,  and  He  sacrificed  Himself  for  human 
souls,  ay,  even  to  the  last  drop  of  blood  in  the  sacred  chalice 

lU 


112         The  Life  and  Character  of  St.  Dominic, 

of  His  loving  heart.  He  knew  their  value,  the  eternity  of 
their  existence,  the  glory  of  their  mission— to  bless  and 
praise  the  Father  through  all  time— and  He  came  down  froi^^ 
heaven  and  died  upon  a  cross  to  save  them.  This  sacred 
heart  of  Jesus,  with  its  four  great  passions  of  love,  was 
the  model  of  all  sanctity  for  all  time.  Now,  consider  the 
character  of  St.  Dominic,  and  if  it  be  found  that  his  heart 
was  modelled  on  the  heart  of  Jesus,  join  in  the  praise  of 
Dominic  with  the  angels  and  saints  who  that  day 
pi-aised  and  honored  him  even  before  the  throne  of  God, 
and  thus  offer  a  tribute  of  love  to  the  heart  of  Jesus.  It 
is  an  old  story,  this  life  of  Dominic,  fully  seven  hundred 
years  old.  In  1170  Dominic  was  born.  One  might  teU  of 
the  nobility  of  his  blood,  and  might  trace  his  descent  from 
a  line  of  kings  and  emperors;  but  the  armorial  bearing 
of  sanctity  that  was  emblazoned  on  the  shield  of  Dominic 
is  higher  than  any  human  heraldry  can  reach,  and  zeal 
and  sanctity  were  the  devices  upon  the  glorious  escutcheon 
that  he  bore.  He  was  born  of  holy  Catholic  parents.  His 
mother,  herself  a  sainted  woman,  watched  over  his  infancy 
to  preserve  and  guide  the  first  dawning  of  reason  in  his 
soul,  that  he  should  learn  the  things  of  God  before  he  was 
made  acquainted  with  the  iniquities  of  the  world.  But 
the  holy  woman  had  an  easy  task  to  perform,  for  the  mind 
of  the  infant  Dominic  turned  instinctively  to  heaven. 
Scarcely  was  he  able  to  walk  when  he  would  start  out  of 
his  cot  on  Friday  nights  and  lie  down  on  the  cold,  hard 
floor  till  morning,  resigning  all  the  comfort  of  his  infant 
bed.  He  knew  not  why,  but  his  mother  had  told  liim  of 
a  certain  Baby  that  was  born  in  the  manger  of  a  stable,  and 
holy  instinct  impelled  him  to  make  his  infancy  like  the 
infancy  of  Jesus. 

When  lie  was  seven  years  old  he  was  placed  in  the 
charge  of  his  uncle,  a  holy  priest,  and  for  eight  years 
afterwards  he  lived,  like  Samuel,  in  the  sanctuary.  He 
learned  to  bow  liis  head  in  prostrate  adoration  at  the 
august  sacrifice  of  the  daily  Mass.  He  lived  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  prayer ;  already  he  fasted  and  mortified  his  infant 


The  Life  aiw  Character  of  St.  Dominic.         113 

flesh  ;  no  stain  of  sin  was  upon  him,  no  impulse  of  temp- 
tation was  seen  to  move  him.  His  purity  was  angelic  ;  no 
thought  that  might  shame  an  angel  crossed  his  mind,  no 
word  that  might  scandalize  an  angel  was  heard  from  his 
lips.  In  his  fifteenth  year  he  was  as  pure  of  soul  as  when 
he  was  carried  from  the  marble  baptismal  font  with  the 
water  of  regeneration  still  glistening  upon  his  infant  brow. 
At  fifteen  he  was  sent  to  the  University  of  Valencia,  in 
Spain,  there  to  remain  till  he  had  completed  his  five-and- 
twentieth  year.  There  he  should  live  amidst  sights  and 
scenes  and  words  of  iniquity  and  sin,  there  amid  all  the 
hot  passions,  the  unbridled  recklessness,  and  tlie  wild 
license  of  youth.  In  the  midst  of  this  whirlpool  of  temp- 
tation the  holy  youth  Dominic  spent  ten  trying,  ten  terri- 
ble years  of  his  life.  He  spent  them  after  the  fashion  of 
the  youth  of  Jesus,  for  the  Babe  whom  in  his  infancy  he 
had  imitated  was  still  dwelling  in  his  heart  and  protecting 
him  from  all  peril.  Thus,  eaith  the  Lord,  he  hath  moved 
with  me  in  peace  and  in  justice  ;  truth  and  holiness  were 
upon  his  lips,  and  no  iniquity  could  be  found  in  him. 
With  the  sensitive  instinct  of  sanctity  he  shrank  from 
the  sin  around  him.  He  sat  in  his  room,  with  the  crucifix 
before  him,  intent  upon  knowledge,  human  and  divine,  or 
he  knelt  in  some  lone  corner  of  tlie  cathedral  pouring  forth 
his  soul  to  God.  Four  years  he  devoted  to  the  study  of 
earthly  science  and  earthly  accomplishments,  so  highly 
prized  by  the  world  ;  but  when  he  had  reached  his  twen- 
tieth year  he  put  away  those  things  from  him  for  ever. 
He  turned,  the  ancient  chronicle  of  his  life  relates,  with 
all  the  love  of  his  virgin  heart,  with  all  the  force  of  his 
powerful  and  enlightened  intellect,  to  the  study  of  the 
Scriptures  and  the  things  of  God.  His  future  life  was  de- 
voted to  divine  knowledge  and  to  prayer.  His  life  was 
retired  and  solemn  beyond  his  years  ;  he  was  never  found 
in  any  place  of  public  resort  or  amusement.  Like  his 
Divine  Master  and  Model,  he  was  frequently  seen  to  weep, 
but  never  to  indulge  in  frivolous  laughter.  About  this 
period  St.  Dominic  made  the  great  sacrifice  of  his  early 


114        The  Life  and  Character  of  St.  Dominio, 

life.  A  great  famine  came  upon  the  country,  like  the  ter- 
rible famine  that  overwhelmed  our  own  country  some 
thirty  years  ago.  St.  Dominic's  resources  were  ample, 
and  he  devoted  them  all  to  the  relief  of  the  poor.  But 
these  resources  were  exhausted,  and  the  famine  was  una- 
bated. Then  his  heart  was  still  more  moved,  and  he  sold 
his  books  to  buy  bread  for  those  that  starved — those  books 
of  philosophy  and  theology  which  he  so  much  loved.  It 
was  a  time  when  books  were  scarce  and  difficult  to  be 
obtained ;  printing  was  not  then  invented,  and  in  those 
days  an  estate  was  often  given  for  a  book.  But  Dominic 
surrendered  this  without  regret  in  the  cause  of  charity, 
and,  turning  to  the  crucifix,  he  exclaimed :  "  O  Divine 
and  Eternal  Wisdom  !  thou  art  to  me  the  sole  fountain  of 
knowledge  henceforth  and  for  ever  more  I " 

Another  instance  of  his  marvellous  charity  is  record- 
ed. A  widow,  like  to  the  widow  in  the  Scripture,  was  de- 
prived of  her  son,  her  sole  support.  Iler  son  was  sold  to 
slavery.  Dominic  heard  of  this,  and  his  heart  was  touch- 
ed with  pity,  and  he  said  to  the  woman,  "  Weep  no  more, 
O  woman  !  but  teU  me  the  cause  of  thy  grief";  and  she 
told  him  that  her  son  was  taken  away  a  slave,  and  that 
she  should  never  look  upon  his  face  again.  And  he  dis- 
covered the  place  of  the  captivity,  and  resolved  to  restore 
the  son  to  the  mother,  and  to  take  upon  himself  the  con- 
dition of  a  slave.  And  God,  as  with  Abraham  of  old,  was 
pleased  with  his  servant,  but  did  not  exact  the  sacrifice  he 
would  make,  and  He  found  other  means  to  deliver  the 
slave  from  his  captivity.  But  on  that  day  Dominic  obtain- 
ed the  noblest  crown  of  the  martyrdom  of  exalted  love, 
and  God  did  not  refuse  him  the  assistance  he  had  prayed 
for  in  his  studies.  He  was  learned  beyond  his  fellows  ; 
the  most  learned  men  in  the  university,  the  most  distin- 
guished scholars  in  the  schools  held  their  peace  when  the 
young  Dominic  spoke  of  theology.  His  word  on  this  sub- 
ject was  law,  and  no  one  dared  to  dispute  when  he  had 
spoken.  He  was,  indeed,  a  man  after  God's  own  heart — 
no  stain  or  shadow  of  sin  was  upon  him.    Upon  the  grace 


Tee  Life  and  Character  of  St.  Dominic.         115 

which  he  had  received  in  baptism  he  built  a  magnificent 
superstructure  of  grace.  His  heart  was  filled  with  the  first 
great  love  of  the  heart  of  Jesus,  the  love  for  his  Heavenly 
Father,  and  he  enrolled  himself  among  the  servants  of 
God.  The  holy  oil  of  the  priesthood  was  poured  upon  liis 
head,  and  with  the  sacred  unction  his  hands  were  anoint- 
ed, and  head  and  hand  were  henceforth  dedicated  to  the 
sole  service  of  his  Saviour — that  head  endowed  with  intel- 
lect and  enriched  with  knowledge,  that  hand  clean  of  all 
guilt  before  God.  At  twenty-five  years  of  age  he  renounc- 
ed all  the  brilliant  and  alluring  worldly  prospects  that  lay 
extended  before  him,  and  returned  to  his  home  to  receive 
the  grace  of  ordination.  The  young  prince,  even  as  a 
priest,  might  have  aimed  at  power  and  distinction.  Em- 
perors claimed  him  as  a  beloved  relation,  kings  called  him 
familiarly  by  his  name  as  one  among  themselves.  The 
Church  always  desired  to  select  the  most  worthy  ministers 
in  her  service,  and  was  always  anxious  to  compensate  for 
great  sacrifices  made  in  her  cause  by  such  distinctions  as 
it  was  in  her  power  to  bestow.  But  Dominic  turned  away 
from  all  those  distinctions,  and  he  buried  himself  for  nine 
years  in  the  monastery  at  Osma.  The  canons  of  the  Osma 
cathedral  had  formed  themselves  into  a  regular  communi- 
ty, formed  upon  the  rule  of  St.  Augustine.  Thus  they 
lived,  giving  their  lives  to  poverty,  obedience,  and  devo- 
tion, to  prayer  and  the  contemplation  of  God.  This  order 
St.  Dominic  entered,  and  the  moment  he  entered  the  chap- 
ter all  felt  that  a  new  light  of  purity  had  shone  out  among 
them.  The  oldest  and  most  experienced  among  them  re- 
ceived new  grace,  new  fervor,  a  consciousness  of  what  God 
could  effect  in  the  spirits  of  his  chosen  ones. 

Their  rules  were  strict  and  austere.  At  twelve  o'clock 
they  rose  to  pray  ;  their  matins  said,  they  were  permitted 
to  retire,  and  returned  to  their  cells  in  profound  silence  and 
holy  contemplation.  Dominic  alone  remained.  He  came 
out  from  his  place  in  the  choir  behind  the  altar  and  took 
his  station  in  front  of  the  sanctuary,  and  there  through  the 
long,  silent  hours  of  the  night,  alone  with  God  and  with 


116         The  Life  axd  Character  of  St.  Dominic. 

the  angels  of  God,  he  poured  f  ortli  his  whole  soul  in  prayer. 
Then  God  heard  from  the  lips  of  this  man  such  words  as 
He  hears  in  heaven  from  the  highest  and  holiest  of  His 
angels — such  burning  protestations  of  love,  such  ardent 
aspirations  to  be  permitted  to  suffer  and  to  die  for  the  love 
of  God.  And  when  the  gray  dawn  broke  through  the  ca- 
thedral windows,  and  the  canons  returned,  they  found  him 
changed,  and  pale,  and  exhausted,  like  one  worn  out  by 
terrible  physical  exertion — prostrated  by  the  violence  of 
his  emotion.  And  there  were  traces  of  tears  on  the  pave- 
ment where  he  knelt  before  the  sanctuary,  and  another 
stain  there  was,  too,  upon  the  stones — the  stain  of  blood. 
For  this  faithful  man,  as  he  knelt  alone,  would  beat  his 
shoulders  and  scourge  himself  with  a  scourge  of  iron  till 
the  blood  streamed  down,  as  it  streamed  from  the  body  of 
Christ  when  He  knelt  in  His  agony  in  the  garden  of  Geth- 
semane.  Thus  for  nine  years  of  his  priesthood  his  life 
was  spent  in  the  sanctuary,  and  his  heart  was  consumed 
by  the  love  of  God  ;  but,  save  his  glorious  example  of 
purity  and  sanctity,  he  had  as  yet  done  nothing  for  his 
fellow-men.  He  had  as  yet  only  attained  to  the  first  of  the 
great  loves  of  the  heart  of  Jesus  Christ — the  love  for  his 
heavenly  Father.  At  length  came  the  period  when  the 
holy  father  went  forth  from  the  cloister,  from  the  house 
of  his  predilection  and  devotion,  and  his  name  now  rises 
clear  and  bright  in  the  horizon  of  history. 

He  set  forth  with  regret,  hoping  for  the  day  of  his  re- 
turn, that  he  might  there  end  his  days  in  the  holy  con- 
templation of  God.  He  went  forth  with  his  bishop  to  travel 
in  the  more  northern  portions  of  Europe  ;  but  even  on  his 
journey  he  preserved  in  all  their  strictness  the  austerities 
of  his  order.  But  the  moment  he  entered  into  the  district 
of  Provence  his  heart  refused  to  beat,  liis  brain  to  think  ; 
the  whole  sanctity  and  purity  of  his  life  revolted  from  the 
terrible  scenes  he  there  beheld.  Those  fair  provinces,  the 
fairest  in  Europe,  were  invested  by  the  terrible  and  per- 
nicious heresy  of  the  Albigenses,  in  reality  but  another 
form  of  the  old  Manichean  heresy,  that  had  crawled  like  a 


TsE  Life  and  Character  of  St.  Dominic.         117 

venomous  snake  through  the  ranks  of  the  faithful  even 
while  the  Church  lay  hid  in  the  tombs  of  the  catacombs. 

They  held  the  blasphemous  doctrine  that  Almighty  God 
was  the  author  of  evil,  and  was  responsible  for  every  sin 
that  was  committed  by  man  ;  that  no  man  was  free  to  avoid 
sin  if  it  lay  in  his  path  ;  that  man  had  no  power  to  avoid 
ev^il ;  that  all  manner  of  crimes,  lying,  adultery,  drunken- 
ness, and  debauchery,  might  be  freely  committed.  Tliey 
denied  the  free  will  of  man  ;  they  denied  the  existence  of 
a  place  of  future  punishment  or  reward ;  they  degraded 
God  to  the  condition  of  being  the  author  of  evil,  and  man 
to  the  slave  of  it.  Those  worse  tlian  atheists  made  their 
God  a  demon  by  denying  His  greatest  attribute.  His  infinite 
holiness.  This  licentious  doctrine  had  everywhere  spread 
throughout  the  country.  The  great  barons  patronized  it ; 
the  common  people  liked  it.  The  Catholic  churches  were 
X)ulled  down,  the  priests  were  driven  from  their  flocks,  the 
nuns  from  their  convents,  bishops  from  their  sees.  The 
voice  of  prayer  was  no  longer  heard,  and  the  abomination 
of  desolation  brooded  over  the  land. 

All  at  once  the  mystery  of  his  future  life  dawned  before 
the  eye  of  this  great  servant  of  God.  He  understood  that 
his  life  henceforth  was  not  one  of  peace  but  of  war.  He 
understood  that  he  should  return  no  more  to  the  quiet  and 
holy  cloisters  which  he  loved,  that  he  must  draw  the  sword 
of  truth,  that  he  must  arm  himself  with  the  helmet  and 
breastplate  of  faith  and  justice,  that  he  must  arise,  like 
another  David,  for  the  people  of  God,  and  strike  down  the 
Goliah  of  heresy  that  assailed  them.  He  thought  he  heard 
ringing  in  his  ears  the  words  of  God :  "  Thou  shalt  smite 
them,  and  thou  shalt  be  as  a  wall  of  brass  and  iron  to  re- 
sist their  power."  He  felt  it  his  mission  to  restore  peace 
and  happiness,  truth  and  religion  to  those  fair  but  tempted 
provinces.  Then,  indeed,  the  third  great  love  of  the  heart 
of  Jesus  welled  forth  in  the  heart  of  Dominic,  and  he 
resolved  to  abandon  for  ever  his  beloved  cloister  and  to 
devote  every  energy  of  his  soul  and  brain  to  stamp  out 
this  pernicious  heresy  and  restore  unity  and  peace  to  the 


118         The  Life  and  Character  of  St.  Dominic. 

Church  of  God.  All  Europe  was  then  Catholic,  and  the 
nations  around,  in  the  interests  of  religion,  and  fearing 
that  those  pernicious  doctrines  might  creep  into  their  own 
lands,  had  armed  themselves  to  make  war  upon  the  pro- 
moters of  tliis  pestilent  heresy.  And  Dominic  watched  the 
war,  and  never  was  greater  human  wisdom  displayed  than 
by  the  combatants  on  either  side.  And  the  passions  of 
men  were  excited,  and  oceans  of  blood  were  shed ;  but  the 
great  end  appeared  as  far  from  attainment  as  ever.  And 
Dominic  waited  and  prayed,  and  now  his  heart  was  in- 
flamed mth  the  second  great  love  of  the  heart  of  Jesus — 
the  love  for  His  Virgin  Mother.  Greater,  far  greater  than 
the  love  he  bore  for  his  own  sainted  mother,  who  had  borne 
him  into  the  world,  was  the  love  he  bore  the  pure  Mother 
of  God,  who  had  conceived  him  into  spiritual  life  in  that 
hour  of  her  sore  agony  when  she  watched  the  form  of  her 
expiring  Son  upon  the  cross. 

Heart-broken  at  the  desolation  of  the  holy  Church,  the 
spouse  of  Christ,  Dominic  wearied  Heaven  with  prayer, 
and  night  after  night  he  implored  the  assistance  of  God 
through  the  intercession  of  his  Mother.  And  lo  !  in  a 
vision  that  assistance  was  vouchsafed  him.  As  he  knelt 
one  night  in  the  silent  church,  while  in  the  country  aU 
around  him  the  clang  of  battle  and  the  cries  of  rage  and 
agony  were  heard,  while  prostrate  in  prayer,  suddenly  a 
sound  of  ineffably  sweet  music  filled  the  church  ;  the  carved 
saints  and  angels  around  seemed  to  grow  resonant  with 
celestial  harmony.  He  saw  in  the  air  above  him  the  holy 
Virgin  clothed  in  white  raiment,  the  snow  dull  by  com- 
parison beneath  her  feet,  and  on  her  head  a  crown  of 
twelve  lustrous  and  shining  stars,  and  in  her  arms  a  Child 
of  surpassing  beauty,  whose  features  resembled  those  of  the 
Virgin  even  as  the  features  of  an  earthly  child  resemble 
those  of  its  mother.  Then  Dominic's  soul  was  lifted  up, 
and  he  broke  forth  into  a  grand  Te  Deum  of  praise  and 
adoration.  He  rejoiced  exceedingly  to  see  the  Virgin,  and 
the  Child  in  the  arms  of  the  Virgin  Mother.  And  the  Lady 
bent  down  to  her  servant,  and,  giving  him  the  holy  beads 


The  Life  and  Character  of  St.  Dominic,         119 

she  held  in  lier  liands,  she  said:  "Take  this  and  preach 
my  rosaiy.  Teach  them  to  pray,  teach  them  the  great 
mysteries  of  the  life  of  my  Eternal  Son.  Teach  the  peo- 
ple to  love  my  Child  and  worship  Him  in  contemplation 
and  in  prayer." 

Mary  returned  to  heaven,  and  next  morning  Dominio 
went  forth  on  the  mission  she  had  given  him.  He  stood 
erect  between  the  two  contending  armies.  "A  truce,"  he 
cried,  "  to  your  wars  ;  Christians,  unite  with  me  in  prayer." 
And  he  preached  his  first  sermon  on  the  rosary,  and  he 
knelt  upon  the  ground  and  prayed.  And  the  Christian 
soldier  bent  his  mailed  knee  to  the  earth,  and  the  heart  of 
the  heretic  was  softened  as  he  listened  to  the  mysteries  of 
man's  redemption,  and  soon  both  armies,  that  had  been  en- 
gaged in  bloody  battle,  joined  together  in  peaceful  prayer. 
And  soon,  too,  the  rosary  of  Mary,  preached  by  St.  Domi- 
nic, brought  back  one  hundred  thousand  erring  souls  to 
the  fold  of  Christ.  That  prayer,  the  most  beautiful  that 
ever  issued  from  the  lips  of  a  Christian,  the  "Our  Fa- 
ther," is  taught  us  by  God  Himself;  the  "Hail  Mary" 
learned  at  the  lips  of  an  angel ;  the  "  Holy  Mary"  given 
us  by  the  Church  ;  the  "  Glory  be  to  the  Father"  an  act 
of  faith  in  the  Blessed  Trinity  and  profound  adoration  for 
tlie  Three  Divine  Persons.  The  rosary  was  one  of  the 
brightest  weapons  in  the  armory  of  God  for  the  defence 
of  the  Church  and  the  overthrow  of  heresy. 

The  fourth  love  of  the  Sacred  Heart  was  strong  in  the 
heart  of  St.  Dominic  when  he  labored  thus  long  and 
earnestly  for  the  salvation  of  souls.  To  the  end  of  his  life 
he  labored,  and  before  he  died  he  had  a  great  and  strong 
reward,  which  has  been  accorded  only  to  two  of  the  saints 
of  God  in  the  history  of  the  Church.  St.  Patrick  was  one 
of  these ;  he  was  the  only  saint  that  converted  a  whole 
nation,  that  found  it  pagan  and  made  it  Catholic,  and 
so  Catholic  to  the  end  of  time.  St.  Dominic  was  the  only 
one  that  so  stamped  out  and  destroyed  a  heresy  that  no 
trace  of  it  remained,  and  even  its  name  has  passed  away. 
The  fruit  of  his  life,  as  God  promised  His  disciples,  has  re- 


120  The  Life  and  Character  of  St.  Dominic. 

mained.  It  is  now  more  than  six  hundred  years  since 
St.  Dominic  was  borne  Mgh  up  into  heaven  amidst  the 
choir  of  rejoicing  angels.  Nations  have  risen  and  perished 
since.  Great  men  have  had  time  to  grow  great  and  to  be 
f  orgotton.  Cities  have  been  built  and  fallen  to  decay  ;  the 
very  appearance  of  the  material  earth  has  altered  ;  and  all 
through  that  period  to  the  present  day  his  children  have 
followed  in  his  footsteps,  have  been  animated  by  the  four 
great  loves  that  filled  his  heart,  have  lived  and  died  for 
the  faith  of  Christ.  To  contemplate  the  sufferings  and 
persecutions  they  endured  we  need  not  look  to  the  fury 
and  intolerance  of  the  Turk,  the  relentless  and»  despotic 
bigotry  of  the  czar,  or  the  subtle  cruelty  of  the  emperor 
of  China.  We  may  turn  our  eyes  towards  home.  As  the 
English  historian  tells  us,  six  hundred  Dominican  friars 
perished  for  the  faith  of  Ireland  during  the  persecutions  in 
the  reign  of  the  gentle  English  queen.  But  we  have  sur- 
vived the  storm  ;  and  I  pray  God  that  while  the  shamrock 
springs  from  Irish  soil  Ireland  will  have  Dominicans  to 
follow  the  example  of  their  great  founder,  and  to  preach 
from  Irish  lips  and  Iiish  hearts,  the  faith  of  Christ. 


St.  Thomas  Aquinas. 


Ih  tbia  sermon  Father  Burke  graphically  delineates  the  life  of  one  of  the 
greatest  of  the  saints.  For  centuries  the  Church  has  held  in  high  esteem 
the  writings  of  St.  Thomas,  and  the  people  of  many  generations  have  been 
taught  to  regard  him  as  the  model  of  purity  and  virtue.  In  this  sennon, 
as  in  others,  Father  Burke  conveys  a  lasting  impression  to  the  minds  of 
his  readers. 

For  the  text  of  his  discourse  Father  Burke  used  these  words :  "  That  man  is 
approved  whom  God  Himself  hath  commended." 

"WE  have  heard  already  these  words  of  the  apostle,  in  re- 
^'  lation  to  the  great  saint  for  whose  festival  we  are 
preparing,  in  the  testimony  which  God  the  Father  hath 
rendered  him  by  the  ministry  of  His  angels,  covering  him 
with  the  cincture  of  purity.  We  have  considered  tlie  testi- 
mony which  God  the  Son  rendered  to  His  great  servant, 
saying  to  him  in  that  miraculous  manifestation:  "Thou 
hast  written  well  concerning  me,  O  Thomas !  "  This  even- 
ing it  remains  for  us  to  consider  the  testimony  rendered  to 
this  great  saint  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  Third  Person  of  the 
Blessed  Trinity,  in  order  that  the  word  of  the  apostle  may 
be  fulfilled  in  all  its  fulness.  "That  man  is  approved 
whom  God  Himself  hath  commended."  We  know,  as  I 
told  you,  that  God,  the  First  Person  of  the  Blessed  Trinit}^, 
revealed  Himself  and  acted  towards  His  creatures,  as  St. 
Paul  tells  us,  by  the  ministry  of  the  angels  in  the  old  law. 
We  know  that  God  the  Son,  the  Second  Person  of  the 
Blessed  Trinity,  revealed  Himself  and  acted  towards  His 
creatures  through  the  sacred  humanity  which  He  assumed. 
Now,  as  God  the  Father  acted  through  the  ministry  of 
His  angels,  as  God  the  Son  acted  through  the  ministry  of 

121 


123  St.  Thomas  Aquinas, 

His  sacred  humanity,  so  God  the  Third  Person  acted  and 
acts  in  this  world  through  the  ministry  of  the  holy  lio- 
man  Catholic  Church.  She  is  to  God  the  Holy  Ghost  what 
the  angels  were  to  God  the  Father  of  old,  what  the  sacred 
humanity  was  to  God  the  Son  in  His  Incarnation.  Such 
is  the  Church  to  God  the  Holy  Ghost — His  messenger,  His 
leading  instrument,  the  chosen  means  adopted  by  Him  by 
which  He  is  to  reveal  Himself  unto  the  children  of  men. 
She  is  more,  this  Church  of  God  is  far  more,  to  God  the 
Holy  Ghost  than  were  the  angels  to  God  the  Father,  for 
the  Eternal  Father  used  them  merely  for  the  purpose  of 
messengers  unto  men,  but  He  by  no  means  dwelt  or  took 
up  His  dwelling  amongst  them.  But,  even  as  God  tlie 
Son,  the  Second  Person,  abided  and  abides  in  the  sacred 
humanity  which  he  took  from  the  Blessed  Virgin  Mury,  so 
God  the  Holy  Ghost  took  up  His  dwelling  in  the  Catholic 
Church  and  abides  in  her.  Oh  !  great  and  mighty  glory  of 
God  on  this  earth,  that  the  Lord  should  dwell  in  the  midst 
of  her,  pouring  forth  His  rays  in  unerring  truth,  director  of 
this  great  Church,  the  teacher  of  the  world,  i)ouring  forth 
sanctity  in  that  moral  doctrine,  untainted  and  untaintable, 
which  is  poured  forth  amongst  men  from  the  lips  and  illus- 
trated in  the  holy  action  of  the  Church  of  God.  For  re- 
member that  as  her  word  is  the  word  of  eternal  truth, 
which  cannot  err,  so  her  action  is  the  action  of  unerring 
sanctity,  which  cannot  be  deliled,  although  there  are  in  the 
Church,  and  have  been  found  from  the  beginning,  those  who 
profess  themselves  her  children,  weak  in  faith  and  faith- 
less. The  infidelity  of  this  individual  or  that,  this  nation 
or  that,  has  no  place  in  the  unerring  faith  and  infallible 
teaching  of  God's  Church.  There  are  today,  as  there  were 
of  old,  children  of  the  Church  of  God,  perhaps  in  the  sanc- 
tuary as  well  as  out  of  it,  whose  lives  and  acts  may  not 
bear  the  test  of  Gospel  criticism. 

Just  as  the  infidelity  of  a  man  or  of  a  nation  is  no  real 
reproach  to  the  Church's  truth,  so  the  A^ickedness  of  a 
man  or  the  faithless  morals  of  a  people  are  no  real  reproach 
to  the  Church's  sanctity.    She  is  essential  truth,  because  of 


ISt.  Thomas  Aquinas.  133 

the  Spirit  that  is  within  her.  "  I  will  send  you,"  says  He, 
"  my  Spirit,  the  Spirit  of  Truth,  which  will  abide  with  you 
unto  the  end  of  the  world,"  without  intermission  or  inter- 
ruption. The  Spirit  of  Truth  is  in  the  mind  and  on  the 
lips  of  the  holy  Church  of  God :  in  her  mind,  because, 
says  the  apostle,  "she  has  the  word  of  Christ"  ;  on  her 
lips,  for  the  apostle  said:  "Even  if  an  angel  of  God  de- 
scended from  heaven  to  preach  any  other  gospel  than  that 
which  you  have  heard  from  our  lips,  believe  him  not";  he 
must  be  false,  because  we  have  really  spoken  the  word  of 
eternal  truth.  But  the  same  Spirit  of  divine  truth  is  also 
the  Spirit  of  sanctity.  He  is  called,  as  the  Holy  Ghost,  Spi- 
ritus  Sanctus,  the  Holy  Spirit — holy  Himself,  for  He  is 
God,  and  able  to  produce  holiness  in  all  those  in  whom  He 
rests.  Whenever  our  Lord,  the  Saviour  of  the  world, 
would  confer  on  His  apostles  the  gift  of  infallibility,  in- 
spiration, and  sanctity,  He  transmitted  that  gift  by  breath- 
ing on  them,  saying  to  them  :  ' '  Receive  ye  the  Holy  Ghost." 
Now,  from  all  this  we  gather  two  great  truths  :  that  the 
Holy  Spirit  of  God  abides  in  the  Catholic  Church  by  the 
gift  of  her  Divine  Lord,  remaining  unto  the  end  of  time  as 
at  once  the  guardian  of  the  Church's  truth  and  the  guard- 
ian of  the  Church's  sanctity  or  holiness.  Whenever  she 
speaks,  it  is  the  Holy  Ghost  that  speaks.  Whenever  she 
bears  testimony  to  doctrine  or  to  man,  it  is  the  Holy  Ghost 
that  bears  that  testimony.  Whenever  she  exalts  the  man, 
it  is  God  Himself  who  exalts  him.  And  therefore  it  is  that 
the  truth  of  the  Catholic  Church  can  never  fail,  because  of 
the  abiding  Spirit  of  the  Holy  Ghost ;  so  also  the  Catholic 
Church  alone  is  able  to  confer  the  title  of  immortal  and 
imperishable  fame,  because  her  title  comes  from  God. 
Why  do  I  say  all  this  ?  Is  it  that  I  doubt  your  faith  in 
the  Church  ?  No,  no  ;  but  I  wish  to  recall  to  your  minds 
the  purpose  for  which  the  Holy  Ghost  remains  in  the 
Church.  The  office  which  the  Holy  Spirit  fulfils  in  the 
Church,  the  purpose  for  which  He  remains,  is  to  preserve 
her  faith,  to  create,  foster,  and  increase  her  sanctity  and 
gi'ace  ;  the  office  which  the  Holy  Ghost  fulfils  in  the  Church 


IM  St.  Thomas  Aquinas. 

of  God  is  to  bear  testimony  to  the  truth,  to  mark  her 
saints,  to  bear  testimony  to  tliem,  to  exalt  them  and  confer 
on  them  the  crown  of  unfading  glory,  to  give  what  He 
alone  can  give,  an  immortal  glory,  celebrated  on  earth  and 
in  heaven,  destined  to  be  imperishable  on  earth  as  long  as 
it  remains,  and,  when  earth  rolls  away,  to  gain  for  ever  an 
immortal  and  imperishable  crown  in  the  kingdom  of  God's 
glory.  Once  more,  therefore,  in  order  that  we  may  under- 
stand the  subject  to  which  we  approach,  when  the  Catholic 
Church  speaks  the  Holy  Ghost  speaks. 

Do  you  remember,  dearly  beloved,  that  when  Moses 
spoke  to  the  Jewish  people  of  old  he  always  expected 
them  to  receive  his  word  as  the  Word  of  God  ?  He  told 
them  distinctly  that  although  he  was  only  a  man  they 
should  remember  it  was  their  God  that  spoke,  because  he 
was  the  chosen  mouth-piece  of  God.  Whenever  they  re- 
ceived him  he  always  spoke  to  them  as  of  receiving  God. 
Whenever  they  disobeyed  him  the  first  thing  he  did  w^as 
to  retire  to  some  silent  place,  kneel  down,  and  say:  "O 
Lord !  the  people  have  disobeyed  me,  be  not  angry  with 
them."  Whenever  they  quarrelled  with  Moses  God  took 
up  the  quarrel.  Whenever  we  read  that  the  people  re- 
belled Almighty  God  said :  "Let  me  wreak  my  vengeance 
on  these  people."  When  Core,  Dathan,  and  Abiron  re- 
belled, and  refused  to  be  subject.  Almighty  God  said : 
"  Bring  out  these  men  before  the  tents  of  the  children  of 
Israel.  They  have  rebelled  against  you.  Be  silent,  pray 
not  for  them  ;  for  I  will  cause  the  earth  to  open  and  hell 
to  swallow  them  up."  Tliose  that  had  rebelled  were  placed 
together,  and  the  earth  devoured  them.  Why  ?  Because 
it  was  not  the  man  but  God  Himself  against  whom  they 
rebelled.  That  which  was  conferred  on  the  Jewish  law- 
giver Jesus  Christ  has  conferred  on  the  Catholic  Church. 
Never  were  more  awful  words  spoken  than  these  :  "  As  the 
Father  hath  sent  me,  so  do  I  send  you.  Amen,  I  say  to 
you,  he  that  heareth  you  heareth  me,  and  he  that  de- 
spiseth  you  despiseth  me."  They  took  the  men  to  whom 
Christ  spoke  these  words,  subjected  them  to  every  kind  of 


St.   Thomas  Aquinas.  125 

persecntion,  put  them  into  prison,  to  torture,  to  cruel  and 
ignominious  deaths.  How  little  they  knew  that  whilst 
they  were  despising  and  persecuting  Peter,  James,  Andrew, 
Philip,  and  all  the  apostles,  it  was  in  reality  Jesus  Christ 
whom  they  were  persecuting ! 

So,  in  like  manner,  when  the  Church  of  God  bears  her 
testimony  to  any  doctrine  or  to  any  man,  that  testimony 
is  the  testimony  of  God.  If  you  accept  the  testimony 
of  man,  the  testimony  of  God  is  greater.  Every  one  of 
those  apostles  spoke  as  if  God  were  speaking.  Now, 
dearly  beloved,  what  follows  from  all  this  ?  It  follows  that 
when  the  holy  Catholic  Church  looks  on  any  one  of  her 
children,  examines  his  life,  examines  his  writings,  ex- 
amines his  own  personal  character,  and  then  proclaims  to 
the  world  what  manner  of  man  he  was,  what  manner  of 
mind  and  heart  was  his,  then  it  is  the  testimony  of  the 
Holy  Ghost,  the  Third  Person,  speaking  through  the  lips 
of  the  holy  Church.  We  have  seen  further  testimony  to 
Thomas,  the  great  Dominican  doctor,  given  by  the  minis- 
try of  angels.  We  have  heard  the  testimony  of  God  the 
Son,  saying  in  that  miraculous  manifestation,  "Thou  hast 
written  well  of  me,  Thomas."  Now  nothing  remains  but 
to  listen  to  the  voice  of  the  Church.  What  weight  does 
she  bear  for  those  who,  having  the  conclusive  testimony  of 
the  holy  Church,  have  the  testimony  of  God  the  Holy 
Ghost  the  Third  Person  of  the  Blessed  Trinity  ?  We  have 
the  very  loving  voice,  the  testimony  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to 
the  mind,  the  heart,  the  personal  sanctity  of  this  wonder- 
ful teacher  of  the  Church's  doctrines.  Dearly  beloved, 
how  are  we  to  gather  what  the  Church  says,  what  the 
Church  did,  how  the  Church  feels,  of  any  man  ? 

There  are  many  sources  of  information ;  there  are  many 
witnesses  in  the  Church  of  God.  The  Church  is  a  living 
thing  ol  principles  and  motives.  She  is  capable  of  joy ; 
she  can  be  oppressed,  persecuted,  harassed,  and  dishonor- 
ed. At  this  very  moment  the  Church  is  steeped  in  sorrow. 
The  world  is  heaping  persecution  and  distress  upon  her. 
She  is  a  vast,  mighty  body,  spreading  all  over  the  world, 


126  St.  Thomas  Aquinas. 

from  end  to  end  of  the  earth.  Her  voice  is  heard  in  every 
clime,  in  every  language,  and  among  every  people. 
Whilst  her  action  is  spreading  all  over  the  earth,  her  word 
is  the  same  in  every  tongue,  her  Gospel  the  same  in  every 
clime,  for  it  is  the  one  truth,  reflection,  and  action  of  the 
Spirit  of  God.  Therefore,  one  scarcely  knows  which  to 
admire  most — the  extent  and  diversity  of  her  authority,  or 
the  wonderful  union  of  thought,  word,  doctrine,  and 
morality  which  is  the  reflection  of  the  infinite  unity  of 
God.  In  this  mighty  body  there  are  many  sources  of 
information :  her  great  religious  orders,  numbering  their 
thousands  of  priests,  founded  everywhere,  established  and 
illustrated  by  saints — the  ancient  Order  of  St.  Benedict, 
the  Dominicans,  the  Franciscans,  the  Augustinians,  the 
mighty  and  ancient  Carmelites,  and  coming  down  on  the 
stream  of  history  to  the  more  modern,  mighty  institution 
of  the  Jesuits,  and  the  great  order  instituted  by  St.  Yin- 
cent  de  Paul,  the  Passionists  founded  by  St.  Paul  of  the 
Cross,  and  so  on  in  one  great  series,  through  which  some 
of  her  greatest  saints  reveal  and  reflect  the  mind  of  the 
Church ;  then,  again,  learned  men,  individual  saints, 
bishops,  cardinals,  learned  men  who  were  not  saints — not 
canonized  by  the  Church,  and  yet  reflecting  the  Church's 
mind  in  those  great  seats  of  learning — universities  founded 
by  the  Church,  which  is  at  all  times  the  light  and  the 
civilizer  of  the  world,  which  brought  society  to  what  it  is 
to-day  in  true  civilization  from  out  the  chaos  of  its  ele- 
ments in  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era — in  the  fourth 
and  fifth  centuries — which  founded  those  great  universi- 
ties to  be  the  guardians  of  faith  and  morals,  and  which 
were  destined  to  bring  the  world  on  in  the  marcli  of  true 
civilization  ;  others  not  in  the  Churcli,  outside  of  the 
Church's  doctrine,  shed  the  light  of  learning  on  her,  even 
whilst  they  hate  her ;  the  sanctity  of  all  the  Church 
assembled  in  council,  from  time  to  time  and  from  age  to 
age,  resolving,  under  the  guidance  of  tlie  Holy  Ghost,  the 
greatest  questions,  interpreting  the  obscure  points  of 
Scripture— are  sources  of  infonnatiou  and  testimony.    All 


St.  Thomas  Aquinab.  127 

united  bear  their  common  praise  and  admiration  to  this 
great  man,  until  they  place  bim  on  the  highest  pinnacle  of 
intellectual  and  saintly  glory. 

Now,  what  testimony  has  the  Church  rendered  to  this 
great  saint  %  Surely  when  we  reflect  that  at  a  time  when 
the  intelligence  of  man  was  trying  to  emancipate  itself 
from  the  dominion  of  God ;  when  most  learned  philoso- 
phers, searching  the  depth  of  human  knowledge,  pushing 
their  studies  through  all  the  mysteries  of  man's  nature, 
began  to  doubt  whether  the  things  God  revealed  were  com- 
patible with  reason  and  the  intelligence  of  man ;  when 
every  form  of  heresy  arose,  deism  and  pantheism,  and  the 
errors  that  grew  out  of  them  in  the  latter  ages  were  all  tor- 
menting and  persecuting  the  Church,  God  gave  in  that 
very  age  a  man  who  was  able  to  see  into  every  source  of 
knowledge,  to  master  every  known  science,  to  learn  all  the 
Scriptures,  to  take  them  into  his  mind,  not  as  they  lay  on 
the -dead  page,  not  as  they  were  interpreted  by  this  one  or 
that,  but  as  they  came  from  the  mind  of  God,  who  revealed 
them  ;  to  take  up  every  objection  and  argument  by  pagan, 
infidel,  or  heretic,  no  matter  where ;  who  was  able  to  antici- 
pate in  his  mighty  intellect  every  objection  that  was  made 
during  the  six  hundred  years  that  elapsed  since  his  death  ; 
to  annihilate  and  confound  them,  and  to  furnish  an  answer 
to  every  objection  to  Catholic  truth  and  morality  ;  to  reveal 
the  nature  of  God,  the  unity,  trinity,  and  every  attribute ; 
to  describe  in  wonderful  language  the  mysterious  union  of 
God  and  man  ;  to  enter  into  the  whole  question  of  Christ's 
descent  to  take  a  human  heart,  intelligence,  spirit,  strength, 
and  weakness  ;  to  analj^ze  them  all  with  the  keenest  and 
closest  attention.  Every  difficulty  was  removed  by  this 
one  master  mind.  Surely  it  must  be  interesting  for  Catho- 
lics to  know  what  testimony  the  Holy  Ghost  bears  to  this 
superhuman  intelligence,  from  the  sources  whence  testi- 
mony can  be  derived. 

First,  the  testimony  of  the  great  religious  orders.  It 
is  now  six  hundred  years  since  Thomas  Aquinas  passed 
away,  leaving  behind  him  a  body  that  had  never  been 


128  St.  Thomas  Aquinas, 

touched  or  tainted  by  anything  like  sin.  It  is  six  hundred 
years  since  death  sent  to  God  that  mighty  intellect  that 
seemed  already  to  have  seen  and  contemplated  Him  on 
earth.  Every  religious  order  in  the  Church  of  God  has 
spoken  these  six  hundred  years  in  honoring,  exalting,  and 
bearing  testimony  to  this  great  saint.  Of  his  own  order  I 
will  not  speak.  It  would  not  become  me,  a  member — 
though  the  least  and  most  unworthy  of  members  of  that 
order — one  wearing  the  self -same  habit  in  which  Aquinas 
was  clad — it  would  not  become  me  to  speak  of  honors  and 
glory  which  his  own  order  conferred  on  him.  In  every 
age  for  these  six  hundred  years  that  Dominican  Order  has 
produced  some  of  the  highest  and  most  eloquent  philoso- 
phers in  the  Church  of  God.  Their  works  fill  every  eccle- 
siastical library  ;  their  guide  and  master  for  six  hundred 
years  has  been  ' '  Aquinas.' '  The  great  Order  of  St.  Francis, 
formed  about  the  same  time,  was  a  rival  in  the  generous 
race  of  apostleship  and  martyrdom.  St.  Bonaventure  was 
the  first  to  proclaim  the  glories  of  St.  Thomas.  The  more 
ancient  Order  of  St.  Benedict  proclaims  that  when  it  is  a 
question  of  exact  science,  of  dogma,  or  morals,  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas  is  the  great  authority.  The  regular  canons  of  St. 
Genevieve  had  a  rule  which  obliged  them  to  study  him. 

The  great  Society  of  Jesus,  St.  Philip  Neri,  and  St.  Vin- 
cent de  Paul  have  adopted  St.  Thomas  of  Aquinas  as  their 
guide  in  all  matters  of  belief.  St.  Ignatius  left  it  as  a  rule 
for  the  Jesuits  to  study  him.  Their  two  greatest  generals, 
Claude  Acquaviva  and  Muzio  Vitelleschi,  renewed  the 
saint's  injunction.  Bellarmine,  the  great  controversialist, 
whose  name  is  familiar  in  every  Catholic  land,  lays  down 
the  principle  that  Thomas  Aquinas  is  the  saviour  of  his 
belief.  Passing  from  religious  orders,  we  come  to  the 
saints.  Here  we  find  such  great  saints  as  St.  Philip  Neri, 
Charles  Borromeo,  Francis  de  Sales,  Vincent  Ferrer,  who 
thought  it  a  glory  to  be  imitators  of  his  intellectual  and 
saintly  glory.  Learned  men  such  as  Pico  della  Mirandola, 
Caidinal  Bessarion,  and  Bossuet,  the  great  and  migiity 
orator,   the  more  than  Cicero  and  Demosthenes  of  the 


St.  Thomas  Aquinas.  139 

glorious  Churcli  of  France,  displayed  some  of  their  richest 
thoughts  and  grandest  eloquence  when  they  came  to  sj^eak 
of  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin.  You  will  be  surprised  that  one, 
not  the  least,  of  his  followers  was  that  gifted  man  Henry 
VIII.,  who  made  a  noble  beginning.  When  he  read 
Luther's  first  book  he  turned  to  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin, 
and  without  much  difficulty  or  labor  compiled  a  book 
from  his  reading  in  which  he  shattered  to  pieces  Luther's 
arguments  against  the  seven  sacraments,  for  which  he  re- 
ceived the  title  of  the  Defender  of  the  Faith — the  faith 
which  he  afterwards  betrayed.  Erasmus,  that  mild  cynic, 
suspected  though  not  convicted  of  Protestantism — that 
keen  intellect,  which  seemed  to  have  no  respect  for  man 
and  very  little  for  God — speaks  of  St.  Thomas,  saying : 
"When  I  come  to  contemplate  and  speak  of  him  I  am 
like  a  man  looking  at  the  sun  in  mid-day,  blinded  by  its 
brightness." 

We  find  the  universities  of  Salamanca,  Alcala,  Lou- 
vain,  Douay,  Bologna,  Naples,  Padua,  and  Turin  all  ad- 
mitting and  incorporating  the  fundamental  rules  of  St. 
Thomas  as  the  test  of  true  belief.  Oxford  and  Cambridge, 
silent  to-day,  who  have  much  to  say  of  this  world  but 
nothing  of  God,  because  the  blight  and  cloud  of  heresy  is 
on  them,  were  once  eloquent  in  praise  of  this  master  man, 
and  were  able  to  produce  such  men  as  Roger  Bacon  and 
W^olsey.  They  are  now  silent  as  the  grave,  because  the 
curse  of  heresy  is  on  them,  outside  the  Church.  Grotius, 
the  greatest  man  that  the  revolution  produced,  who  had 
intellect  enough  to  make  another  Aquinas  and  heart 
enough  to  make  a  saint,  but  who  prostituted  them  by 
beginning  as  a  Catholic  and  ending  as  a  Jew,  through 
all  the  wanderings  of  his  mighty  genius  had  the  one 
vision  ever  before  him,  answering  all  his  doubts  and 
shattering  all  his  arguments — the  mighty  genius  of 
Thomas,  whom  he  loved  to  study  in  his  youth — and  who 
said :  "  Take  away  Thomas,  and  I  will  shatter  the  Catholic 
Church." 

He  was  wrong.    If  Thomas  were  never  created  the  Ca- 


130  St.  Thomas  Aquinas. 

tholic  Church  would  remain.  No  saint  or  doctor  was  ne- 
cessary to  her  to  whom  the  promise  of  God  had  been 
given.  Yet  still  he  admitted  that  every  heresy  that  hell 
could  inspire  was  shattered  by  St.  Thomas.  Let  us  leave 
behind  human  testimony,  even  if  of  enemies  of  the  Church 
yet  all  the  stronger,  because  it  was  wrung  from  them  by 
agencies  and  intelligences  before  which  even  devils  were 
forced  to  bow  down.  Let  us  come  to  the  testimony  of  the 
vicars  of  Christ,  the  popes  of  Rome,  who  for  six  hundred 
years  in  successive  diplomas,  briefs,  and  bulls  gloried  in 
honoring  St.  Thomas,  from  Urban  IV.,  who  wished  to 
make  him  cardinal,  down  to  Pius  IX.,  who  sent  his  bless- 
ing and  a  plenary  indulgence  only  two  days  ago  to  every 
child  who  would  worthily  celebrate  the  festival  of  this 
great  saint.  Gregory  X.  called  him  to  the  Council  of 
Lyons ;  Innocent  V.  called  him  another  St.  Paul ;  Bene- 
dict XI.  says:  *' Thomas  is  my  master  and  my  guide"; 
John  XXII.  says  :  "  Qtiot  scrips  it  articulos,  tot  fecit  mira- 
eiilosr  Urban  Y.,  Nicholas  V.,  Pius  IV.,  Sixtus  V., 
Clement  V.,  Alexander  VII.,  and  Benedict  XIV.  are  loud 
in  his  praise.  The  Councils  of  Lyons,  Florence,  and 
Trent  all  honor  him.  Let  us  pray  that  in  contemplating 
and  loving  so  great  a  saint  we  may  come  to  behold  him  in 
the  kingdom  of  God's  glory. 


St.  Patrick. 


Of  the  many  discourses  delivered  by  Father  Burke  on  St.  Patrick  none  is 
better  than  the  following,  which  was  preached  in  Sf.  Saviour's  Church, 
Dominic  Street,  Dublin,  after  the  twelve  oMock  Mass  on  St.  Patrick's 
day,  1877.    It  is  a  tribute  worthy  of  the  great  saint  of  whom  it  speaks. 

"  And  Jesus,  answering,  said  :  Behold  the  kingdom  of  God  is  wituin  you." 

THESE  words,  dearly  beloved,  are  taken  from  the  seven- 
teenth chapter  of  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Luke,  and 
they  were  spoken  by  the  Son  of  God  to  the  Jews,  even  unto 
the  Pharisees,  but  in  their  fullest  and  highest  meaning 
they  apply  especially  to  the  apostles.  "The  kingdom  of 
God,"  He  says,  "  is  in  you."  If  men  are  to  see  that  king- 
dom, it  must  be  in  you  ;  if  men  are  to  enter  into  that  king- 
dom, it  must  be  through  you  ;  whatever  "  the  kingdom  of 
God,"  ''my  kingdom,"  means  must  be  published,  tauglit, 
and  exemplified  by  you.  And  therefore,  dearly  beloved, 
amongst  all  her  saints  in  their  various  orders  the  holy 
Church  of  God  gives  the  first,  the  highest,  and  the  most 
important  place  to  her  apostles.  Before  her  martyrs,  be- 
fore her  confessors,  before  her  holy  consecrated  virgins, 
although  they  are  the  crown  of  peculiar  glory,  come  the 
apostles  first  of  all.  And  now  consider  briefly  what  this 
apostleship  means.  It  is  clear  from  the  Scriptures  that 
when  our  Divine  Lord  spoke,  as  He  frequently  did,  of  His 
own  kingdom,  calling  it  at  one  time  "my  kingdom,"  and 
another  time  calling  it  "the  kingdom  of  God,"  He  meant 
precisely  and  definitely  the  holy  Church  which  He  was 
about  to  found  upon  earth.  For  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  as 
He  calls  it,  cannot  mean  the  heaven  of  the  blessed,  where 

131 


132  St.  Patrick. 

they  see  God  face  to  face  ;  and  why  ?  Because  Christ  our 
Lord,  wheu  He  speaks  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  which  He 
was  about  to  found — namely,  His  holy  Church — attributes 
to  it  certain  qualities,  certain  facts  that  are  not  found  in 
the  heaven  of  His  glory.  For  instance,  in  one  place  He 
says  :  "  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  the  net  which 
a  man  casts  into  the  sea,  and  in  which  he  takes  up  every- 
thing, good  and  bad."  Now,  it  is  clear  that  this  kingdom 
of  heaven  cannot  be  the  kingdom  of  the  glorious  heaven 
above,  for  there  is  nothing  bad  there,  but  only  the  good ; 
whereas  in  the  Church  upon  earth  we  have  her  children 
good  and  bad,  those  whom  she  encourages,  those  wliom 
she  sanctifies,  and  those  over  whom  she  weeps,  seeking 
their  conversion  and  their  turning  to  God.  The  kingdom 
of  heaven,  therefore,  of  which  the  Saviour  speaks  means 
the  Church-  And,  turning  to  His  apostles,  He  said  :  "  Amen, 
I  say  unto  you,  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  in  you — you  are 
its  heralds,  you  are  to  go  forth  the  light  of  the  world";  as 
He  calls  them  elsewhere,  "  Vos  estis  luces  mundi" — "  You 
are  to  illumine  all  men,  that  they  may  see  your  light,  and 
not  only  your  light,  flashing  upon  their  intellects  and 
flooding  their  souls  with  light,  but  that  they  may  see  also 
your  works  and  your  saintly  deeds,  and  in  them  give  glory 
to  your  Father  who  is  in  heaven."  Now,  dearly  beloved, 
why  does  the  Church  put  the  apostles  at  the  head  of  her 
saints  ?  For  the  simple  reason  that  everything  of  good  and 
sanctity  that  there  is  in  man  or  in  the  world  must  come  to 
man  through  divine  faith.  Whoever  creates  faith  in  the 
soul  of  man  is  the  true  father  of  that  soul ;  whoever  gives 
the  light  to  a  nation  is  the  real  father  of  that  nation.  It  is 
not  only  in  that  light  that  the  life  of  a  man's  soul  begins 
but  the  life  of  a  nation  begins,  and  therefore  of  our  Divine 
Lord  it  is  written:  "In  Him  was  light,  but  the  light  was 
the  light  of  heaven." 

Her  divine  life,  her  supernatural  life,  is  no  other  than 
the  light  of  divine  faith,  and  all  her  gifts  flow  from  this. 
"  Whatever,"  says  the  apostle,  "is  not  of  faith  is  a  sin" — 
that  is  to  say,  wherever  there  is  virtue  available  for  eternal 


St.  Patrick.  133 

life,  wherever  there  is  virtue  to  be  crowned  in  the  kingdom 
of  God  and  acknowledged  by  Him  as  genuine,  that  virtue 
must  spring  from  faith,  that  virtue,  no  matter  what  form 
it  takes,  must  be  enlivened  by  divine  faith.  Therefore, 
elsewhere  it  is  written  that  "without  faith  it  is  impossible 
to  please  God."  Impossible !  I  care  not  how  grand  be  the 
natural  faculties  of  the  intelligence  or  of  the  soul  of  man, 
if  he  has  not  faith,  and  that  faith  the  one  genuine,  divine 
faith,  he  cannoL  please  God.  And  hence  the  apostles  are 
the  fathers  of  the  faith,  because  they  were  chosen  by  Christ 
our  Lord  to  spread  the  faith.  Therefore  they  are  the  high- 
est of  the  saints  ;  and,  speaking  of  the  kingdom  of  God, 
the  apostle  tells  us  that  it  is  founded  upon  the  foundation 
of  the  apostles.  They  are  the  foundation-stones  of  the 
Church  of  God,  upon  which  all  the  superedifice  of  purity, 
of  holiness,  of  godliness  in  every  form  is  built  up  and 
erected.  And,  dearly  beloved,  why  does  He  call  His 
Church  the  kingdom  of  heaven?  For  the  simplest  of  all 
reasons.  There  are  two  heavens  mentioned  in  the  Scrip- 
ture, the  heaven  upon  the  earth  and  the  heaven  around  the 
throne  of  God,  and  both  here  and  there  the  very  essence 
of  heaven  consists  in  the  knowledge  of  God.  Whoever 
knows  God,  whoever  has  a  clear,  accurate,  supernatural 
knowledge  of  God,  that  man  is  in  heaven,  whether  on 
earth  or  in  the  kingdom  of  glory,  by  the  very  fact  of  the 
knowledge.  Any  of  us  leading  a  good  and  holy  life,  and 
dying  in  the  grace  of  God,  and  passing  from  earth  to 
heaven,  beholds  before  the  throne  of  the  Most  High  only 
the  things  that  he  knew  well  on  earth  by  divine  faith.  The 
manner  of  knowledge  is  changed,  the  condition  of  that 
knowledge  is  changed.  Here,  indeed,  we  know  it,  but  we 
see  it  only  darkly  as  in  a  glass  ;  the  cloud  of  faith  is  be- 
tween us  and  God,  and  still  we  know.  In  heaven  that 
cloud  is  broken,  the  veil  is  rent,  and  we  see  even  as  we  are 
seen ;  and  therefore,  although  the  knowledge  does  not 
change  in  a  single  iota,  the  condition  of  that  knowledge 
and  its  manner  are  changed,  but  the  heaven  remains  the 
same. 


134  St.  Patrick. 

When,  therefore,  our  Lord  said  to  His  apostles,  "Tlip 
kingdom  oi  heaven  is  in  you,"  He  meant,  "Tne  lighi  oi 
God  is  in  you,  and  from  you  it  must  go  forth  unto  the 
illumination  of  the  Gentiles  and  the  resurrection  of  the 
whole  world."  The  first  of  the  apostles  to  whom  Christ 
our  Lord  gave  this  word  received  it  by  direct  and  divine 
inspiration,  and  they  went  forth,  and  in  every  land  their 
voices  were  heard,  and  the  principal  nations  of  the  world 
were  converted  by  them.  They  sowed  the  seed  every- 
where, but  they  were  only  twelve  in  number  and  the 
world  was  wide  ;  vast  portions  of  it  were  not  yet  discovered 
or  civilized,  and  the  work  of  the  apostleship  passed  fi-om 
the  twelve  who  received  it  from  Christ  to  the  holy  Church 
of  God  in  her  one,  visible  head,  and  she  continued  the  work 
and  became  the  apostle  of  nations.  Three  hundred  ye.ar3 
and  more  rolled  awaj^.  The  light  was  spreading  rapidly  ; 
but  certain  regions  far,  far  away,  isolated  islands  in  the 
ocean,  great  territories  separated  from  the  rest  of  the 
world  by  vast  and  impassable  mountain-ranges,  remained 
still  in  barbarism  and  obscurity.  And  amongst  these  was 
an  island  far,  far  away  in  the  western  ocean ;  so  far  away 
that  no  foot  of  Roman  legionary  or  tribune  ever  desecrat- 
ed-its  soil ;  so  far  away  that  it  was  called  amongst  the. 
ancients  the  CTZ^ma  TJmle^  or  the  last  stretch,  and  the  out- 
lying district  of  creation  itself,  known  only  to  the  ancient 
civilized  nations  of  Greece  and  the  East,  known  only  by  a 
vague  tradition  of  extraordinary  intellectuality,  of  despe- 
rate valor,  and  of  an  unearthly  and  unnatural  barbaiism 
and  savagery  of  conduct  among  themselves.  They  were 
spoken  of  as  men  who  united  the  greatest  and  most  oppo- 
site qualities,  at  one  time  generous  beyond  all  other  men, 
at  another  time  cruel,  savage,  and  vindictive  ;  their  x:)oetry 
was  known  to  be,  although  barbaric,  of  the  very  higliest 
kind  ;  the  land  was  famous  for  its  richness,  for  the  valor 
of  its  chieftains  and  people  ;  but  beyond  these  vague  tra- 
ditions of  this  far-distant  island,  called  by  the  Grecians 
"the  most  ancient  land,"  called  by  others  in  the  Celtic 
tongue    "leme,"  or   Ireland,  nothing  else  was  known. 


St.  Patrick.  13iJ 

The  fourth  century  was  drawing  to  its  close ;  the  year  400 
hud  almost  come  upon  us.  It  was  about  the  year  '6^Q  or 
390  vvlien  a  iving  from  this  island  of  Ireland  went 'forth 
with  his  war-ships  out  upon  the  face  of  the  ocean  and 
scoured  the  northern  sliores  of  France,  destroying  the 
towns  and  villages,  capturing  the  inhabitants  and  carrying 
them  off  into  slavery.  Now,  this  northern  part  of  France, 
which  was  ravaged  by  Niall  of  the  I^ine  Hostages,  the 
fierce  though  heroic  Irish  king — tliis  northern  coast  of 
France  was  a  most  favored  country  both  in  nature  and 
grace.  It  was  fruitful  and  beautiful,  and  it  was  also 
Christian,  and  already  Christianity  had  flowered  into  all 
its  holiness  there.  And  a  young  man,  the  son  of  a  great 
noble  in  one  of  those  northern  citi(;s  on  the  coast  of  Brit- 
tany, was  taken  prisoner  and  carried  into  Ireland.  He 
was  sixteen  years  of  age — he  had  been  born  in  the  year 
372.  Sixteen  years  of  age,  born  of  Christian,  Catholic 
parents,  most  carefully  and  luxuriously  reared,  and  he 
tells  us  in  his  own  confessions  that  up  to  that  time  he  had 
scarcely  learned  to  love  God. 

Now  he  is  taken  suddenly  from  the  bosom  of  his  fami- 
ly, thrown  into  the  hold  of  one  of  tliose  war-ships  of  the 
Irish  king,  borne  roughly  across  the  boisterous  ocean,  and 
then  flung  on  the  northern  coast  of  Irehmd  and  sold  as  a 
slave,  turned  out  in  hunger  and  in  nakedness  to  feed  the 
cattle  upon  the  cold,  bleak  mountains  of  the  northern  pro- 
vince of  the  land.  There  he  remained  month  after  month, 
year  after  year,  and  in  that  bitter  exile,  not  knowing  the 
language  of  those  who  were  his  masters,  severely  task- 
ed, scourged  and  beaten,  neglected  and  despised,  there 
this  young  Christian,  Patrick,  first  turned  his  heart  to 
God,  for  there  was  no  hope  or  comfort  left  to  him  upon 
the  earth.  Ilis  young  heart  yearned  for  joy,  but  here  and 
all  around  him  was  desolation  and  bitterness  ;  and,  find- 
ing no  joy  upon  the  earth,  a  happy  necessity  c6mp(^lled 
him  to  turn  his  heart  to  God — to  that  God  whom  he  him- 
self confesses  he  had  hitherto  neglected,  though  he  had 
never  violently  offended  Him  by  mortal  sin.     And  so  he 


136  St.  Patrick. 

began  to  pray,  and  the  light  of  God  streamed  in  upon  his 
soul.  He  prayed  day  and  night ;  to  the  enforced  fasting 
he  added  an  additional  fasting  of  love  ;  to  the  stripes  that 
were  inflicted  upon  him  by  the  cruel,  relentless  hand  of 
his  pagan  master  he  added  the  voluntary  discipline  of 
penance,  and  he  wept  bitter  tears  for  the  slight  sins  and 
youthful  follies  of  his  age.  And  thus  he  prepared  his 
Boul ;  and  after  a  few  years,  when  he  escaped  from  his  exile 
and  his  slavery,  he  was  already  a  saint,  matured  for  God 
and  for  the  great  purposes  for  which  God  had  destined 
him.  Returning  to  his  native  land,  he  thought  at  first 
that  he  would  forget  the  land  of  his  captivity,  which  had 
nothing  but  bitter  memories  for  him ;  but,  strange  to  say, 
like  every  stranger  that  ever  yet  was  known  to  have  set 
foot  in  Ireland,  there  was  something  in  the  air  that  he 
breathed,  although  it  was  chilled  with  the  northern 
winter,  there  was  something  in  the  soil  on  which  he  trod, 
there  was  something  in  the  rude  but  generous,  romantic 
character  of  those  who  had  been  so  cruel  to  him,  that 
drew  his  heart  and  his  memory  back  to  the  land.  He  was 
already  more  than  half  Irish  ;  the  natural  heart  of  the  man 
yearned  for  the  land  in  which  he  had  known  nothing  but 
tears,  and  presently  the  Almighty  God  adds  the  super- 
natural longing  of  grace.  "I  was  musing,"  he  says, 
"  after  my  return  to  my  own  people  and  to  my  own  land, 
and  even  amid  the  joys  of  my  restoration  to  them,  I  was 
musing  and  thinking  with  a  sorrowful  heart  upon  Ire- 
land." How  strange,  how  strange,  that  his  heart  and  his 
memory  should  go  back  to  the  land  of  his  slavery  and 
bitterness  I  "And  in  the  night-time,"  he  adds,  *'I  heard 
a  wailing  sound  as  of  voices  carried  across  the  salt  sea  of 
the  western  ocean,  and  it  fell  upon  my  ears  and  said : 
*0  youth!  O  young  man  of  God!  return  to  us  once 
more  and  remain  Avith  us.'  It  was  the  voire  of  the  Irish 
people,"  says  Patrick,  "and  my  heart  failed  within  me." 
Then  he  determined  that  to  this  land  and  this  people 
he  would  return.  Then,  even  as  Ruth  clove  to  Naomi  of 
old  when  she  left  the  fair  and  luxurious  land  of  Moab  to 


St.  Patrick.  137 

return  to  her  own  country  of  Palestine,  and  Ruth  said : 
*'  I  will  go  with  thee  and  remain  with  thee,  and  thy  people 
shall  be  my  people,  and  thy  God  shall  be  my  God,"  so 
Patrick  turned  his  longing  eyes  to  Ireland.  He  stretched 
out  his  hands  over  the  sea  and  said :  "  I  will  return  to  thee, 
O  strange  and  attractive  land  !  I  will  go  to  thee  and  cast 
my  lot  in  thee,  and  thy  people  shall  be  my  people,  but  thy 
god  shall  not  be  my  God,  for  I  will  teach  thee  of  the  true 
God,  and  thou  shalt  be  the  glory  of  the  nations  and  the 
delight  of  God's  holy  Church  and  its  brightest  gem." 
Then,  dearly  beloved,  having  attained  to  the  age  of  man- 
hood, he  began  another  phase  of  preparation  for  his  apos- 
tleship — namely,  the  preparation  of  study  ;  and  you  will 
be  surprised,  perhaps,  to  hear  that  St.  Patrick  spent  at 
least  thirty  years  studying  and  preparing  himself,  and 
that,  as  far  as  we  can  ascertain,  he  was  a  man  sixty  yeara 
of  age  when  he  returned  to  Ireland  as  her  apostle.  Thirty 
years  of  study  ;  what  is  the  meaning  of  this  ?  In  order  to 
understand  and  consider  what  the  apostle  must  be,  the 
apostle  who  goes  forth  in  the  name  and  with  the  authority 
of  Jesus  Christ  from  His  Church  to  evangelize  any  people 
and  to  bring  them  forth  from  the  darkness  of  their  idolatry 
into  the  admirable  light  of  God,  that  man  must  be  fur- 
nished with  at  least  two  things — namely,  he  must,  first  of 
all,  be  possessed  of  all  divine  knowledge,  he  must  know 
the  message  which  he  has  come  to  deliver,  he  must  know 
it  in  all  its  exactness,  in  all  its  integrity,  and  in  all  its  ex- 
tent, in  all  the  length  and  breadth,  the  height  and  depth,  of 
its  meaning.  Consequently  he  must  know  all  divine  things. 
Therefore  of  such  a  one  is  it  written :  "The  lips  of  the 
priest,"  says  the  prophet  of  old,  "  shall  keep  knowledge, 
and  the  people  shall  demand  the  law  at  his  mouth."  He 
must  know  everything  that  is  necessary  in  order  to  form  a 
pagan  people  into  perfect  Christianity  ;  therefore  he  must 
have  the  whole  and  entire  deposit  of  Christian  knowledge 
lodged  in  his  heart  and  ready  at  his  mouth. 

This  is  not  enough  ;  no  nation  was  ever  yet  converted 
by  the  mere  preaching  of  the  Word  of  God.     Although  the 


138  St.  Patrick. 

Word  of  God  is  declared  to  be  penetrating  as  a  two-edged 
sword,  reaching  the  very  spirit ;  although  it  is  declared  to 
be  strong  as  the  warrior's  sldeld  iu  the  hour  of  danger  with 
which  to  turn  aside  death  in  a  thousand  forms,  yet  the 
Word  alone  never  converted  a  people  nnless  the  man  who 
preached  that  Word,  who  preached  it  with  authority,  who 
preached  it  as  one  sent,  who  was  able  to  produce  his  cre- 
dentials and  prove  his  mission — unless  that  man  were  in 
his  own  person,  in  his  own  conduct,  in  his  own  life  a  living 
model  and  example  of  the  Gospel  which  he  preached.  In 
vain  will  he  preach  any  virtue  if  those  who  hear  the  praise 
of  the  virtue,  turning  their  eyes  upon  the  preacher,  behold 
its  absence  in  him.  In  vain  will  he  call  upon  them  to  tread 
the  pathways  of  Christian  purity  and  charity  if  he  is  not 
himseK  transparent  in  his  purity,  even  as  an  angel  of  God. 
In  vain  will  he  call  upon  them  to  despise  the  things  of 
earth,  and  to  lay  hold  of  the  invisible  things  of  heaven, 
unless  he  gives  them  in  his  own  person  an  example  of  one 
who  knows  liow  to  trample  upon  the  good  things  of  this 
•world  in  order  to  secure  the  things  of  heaven.  And  there- 
fore, dearly  beloved,  no  nation  is  converted  except  by  a 
celibate.  No  nation  is  ever  converted  by  the  mere  hearing 
of  the  Word  ;  they  have  eyes  to  see,  hands  to  feel,  minds 
to  reflect  and  reason,  and  the  man  who  preaches  the  Gos- 
pel of  Christ  to  a  pagan  nation  must  be  the  living  imper- 
sonation of  those  virtues.  St.  Patrick,  as  I  have  already 
observed,  had  the  first — namely,  the  sanctity  burning  with 
the  love  of  God,  anxious  to  devote  himself  to  tlie  service 
of  God,  breathing  only  one  ardent  desire  to  shed  his  blood 
and  give  his  life  a  thousand  times  for  the  love  that  burned 
in  him  for  Jesus  Christ.  He  must,  however,  learn  the 
whole  length  and  breadth  of  the  Christian  law,  he  must 
become  the  most  learned  as  well  as  the  holiest  of  men,  be- 
fore he  can  expound  the  law  to  the  people  who,  although 
pagans,  were  already  far  advanced  in  civilization  and  all 
pagan  philosophy.  It  was  to  no  ordinary  race  that  God 
sont  this  apostle,  it  was  to  no  brutish,  savage  people  sunk 
in  intellectual  apathy.    When  he  came  to  preach  this  Go3- 


St.  Patsicl.:.  139 

pel  history  tells  us  that  this  apostle  was  obliged  to  face 
the  most  learned  philosophers  of  the  pagan  era,  that  he 
was  obliged  to  preach  words  which  would  charm  the  ears 
of  poets  attuned  to  sweetest  measure,  and  wlio  were  accus- 
tomed to  lead  the  councils  of  the  nations  to  the  high-sound- 
ing harp.  It  was  to  such  men  he  came,  who  were  able  to 
attest  and  analyze  every  assertion  of  his.  Therefore,  know- 
ing them  so  well,  he  prepared  himself  by  thirty  years  of 
study,  and  now,  when  he  is  sixty  years  of  age,  he  kneels 
down  in  Rome  at  the  feet  of  St.  Sylvester,  and  receives  his 
blessing  and  apostolic  ordination  and  the  command  to 
teach  the  Irish  people  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ. 

He  came,  and  the  winds  of  heaven  favored  in  every 
breeze  his  coming,  wafting  him  along  out  into  the  western 
ocean,  until,  like  the  earliest  fathers  of  whom  we  read,  he 
saw  the  streak  of  island  green,  and  cried  out :  "There  is  my 
Innisfail,  the  island  of  destiny."  He  came,  he  landed  in 
Ireland,  the  mitred  man  with  saintliness  and  grace  upon 
his  lips,  with  learning  in  his  mind,  with  jurisdiction  in  his 
hand.  Oh !  blessed  amongst  the  hours,  most  blessed 
amongst  the  ages  of  our  national  existence,  the  hour  when 
the  sands  of  Ireland  lovingly  clasped  his  feet.  For  it  is 
written:  "Oh!  how  beautiful  are  the  feet  of  those  who 
evangelize  peace  and  all  good  things."  He  came,  and  he 
raised  up  his  voice,  raised  up  the  sign  of  the  cross,  unfurled 
the  standard  of  Jesus  Christ,  preached  the  Gospel,  and 
taught  the  people  of  Ireland,  from  the  king  upon  his 
throne,  from  the  Druid  in  his  sacerdotal  robes  at  the  altar, 
the  minstrel  sitting  in  the  council-chamber,  the  young 
princes  returning  from  the  battle-field  or  from  the  chase, 
down  to  the  humblest  peasant  in  the  land — for  there  were 
no  serfs  ;  never,  never  in  Ireland  was  there  slavery,  never, 
in  its  worst  day,  was  there  the  servitude  known  to  all  other 
nations.  They  rose  at  his  word,  they  listened  to  his  ac- 
cents, which  fell  like  music  upon  their  ears  ;  they  heard 
their  own  grand  Celtic  tongue,  learned  on  the  mountains 
of  Donegal  amongst  so  many  miseries  and  tears,  and  now 
resounding  and  thundering  through   the  land  the  holy 


140  St.  Patrick. 

names  of  Jeans  and  Mary.  They  learned  the  Gospel  of 
God's  love  for  man  and  their  own  vileness,  and  like  one 
man  the  whole  nation  rose  and  welcomed  the  apostle,  took 
the  message  from  his  mouth,  engraved  it  in  their  hearts, 
altd  illustrated  it  at  once  by  a  life  almost  magical  in  its 
suddenness  and  perfection.  Such  is  the  brief  history  of 
Patrick's  apostolic  career.  Unlike  every  other  ajDostle 
ever  sent  to  a  people,  no  difficulty  lay  in  his  way.  We 
read  of  no  persecution,  no  contradictions  of  the  deep,  acute, 
philosoi:)hic  mind  disputing  only  that  it  may  learn,  but 
the  moment  that  it  has  learned  docile  and  humble  as  the 
mind  of  a  little  child  to  receive  the  truth  of  Jesus  Christ. 
No  martyr's  blood  was  necessary  to  fertilize  the  soil,  no 
tear  of  sorrow  did  she  ever  demand  from  her  great  apostle's 
eye,  no  agonizing  hour  of  uncertainty  ever  troubled  him 
in  the  full  peacef ulness  of  his  career  ;  the  word  of  promise 
spoken  to  Moses  of  old  was  fulfilled  and  realized  in  St. 
Patrick.  "Go,"  saith  the  Lord,  "and  I  wUl  give  thee 
every  land  upon  which  thy  foot  shall  tread."  He  came 
conquering  and  to  conquer,  and  the  brightest,  the  strangest 
page  in  the  history  of  the  Church  of  God  is  the  page  that 
records  the  instantaneous  conversion  of  the  Irisli  people. 
He  is  the  only  apostle  on  record  that  found  a  nation  en- 
tirely pagan,  and  before  his  death  there  was  not  a  single 
pagan  of  note  left  in  the  land.  According  to  the  most 
ancient  record,  St.  Patrick  at  one  hundred  and  twenty 
years  of  age  raised  his  dying  hand  to  bless  the  island  of 
his  destiny.  Ireland  at  that  hour  was  not  only  the  most 
Catholic  but  she  was  already  one  of  the  most  holy  nations 
that  God  had  gathered  into  the  bosom  of  his  Church. 

But,  ah !  dearly  beloved,  whilst  our  fathers  were 
charmed  with  the  harmony  of  his  doctrines,  whilst  they  re- 
ceived with  the  assent  of  eager  yet  acute  minds  the  splen- 
did truths  that  their  apostle  taught  them,  whilst  the  mys- 
tery of  holiness  was  niwn  his  lips,  and  from  his  lips  passed 
into  their  souls,  there  was  another  lesson  whicli  Patrick 
taught  the  Ii*ish  people — a  lesson  which  he  taught  them 
forcibly  and  powerfully,  and  which  they  learned  quickly 


St.  Patrick.  141 

and  well — and  that  was  the  lesson  that  sanctity  of  life 
must  accompany  and  crown  Catholic  faith  in  the  heart  of 
every  man  and  every  people  ;  that  faith  without  works  is 
like  the  body  without  the  soul ;  that  faith  without  sanctity 
is  only  a  greater  judgment,  for  it  is  a  greater  sin  to  sin 
against  the  light  when  one  has  received  it  than  to  sin  in 
darkness  when  one  has  never  known  that  light.  And  hav- 
ing taught  them  the  Catholic  faith,  Ireland's  great  apostle 
next  taught  them  the  secret  of  Catholic  holiness,  and  here 
his  work  was  easy  ;  it  involved  no  labor  of  preaching,  it 
involved  no  great  exercise  of  any  faculty  of  his ;  he  had 
only  to  llvo,  to  live  before  the  people.  He  let  them  see 
him,  and  then  the  action  of  this  man' s  life  seemed  to  cry 
out  eloquently  with  the  apostle:  "I  have  taught  you  the 
love,  the  love  of  Jesus  Christ ;  now  be  you  imitators,  as  I 
also  am,  of  my  Lord  and  my  God."  And,  in  fact,  every 
virtue  most  beautiful  in  the  Christian  shows  out  in  him. 
He  was  a  sinless  man,  in  whose  transparent,  holy  life  the 
bitterest  or  most  observant  enemy  could  find  no  flaw  or 
fault ;  yet  he  was  a  most  penitential  man,  fasting  every  day 
of  his  life,  scourging  himself,  rising  in  the  night  and  spend- 
ing the  time  in  prayer,  at  one  time  going  into  the  lonely 
island  in  Lough  Derg,  still  called  Patrick's  Purgatory,  for 
there  he  anticipated  by  a  voluntary  penance  all  the  pains 
and  penances  with  which  a  merciful  God  cleanses  the  souls 
on  earth.  At  another  time,  in  the  beginning  of  Lent,  he 
climbed  up  the  steep  sides  of  that  barren  mountain  that 
rises  up  in  the  western  wilds,  still  called  Croagli  Patrick, 
rising  up  mysteriously,  the  Soracte  of  Ireland,  in  the  midst 
of  a  barren  solitude,  rearing  its  head  into  the  clouds.  He 
climbed  its  rugged  sides,  and  when,  like  Moses  of  old,  he 
had  attained  the  summit  of  the  mountain  he  knelt  down 
and  spent  the  forty  days  of  Lent.  Tears  were  his  only 
food,  he  wept  night  and  day,  and  it  wa-s  only  when  the 
light  of  Easter  was  about  to  break  on  the  land  that  his 
children  who  waited  for  him  saw  him  coming  down  as 
Moses  descended  from  the  sides  of  Sinai — the  light  of  God 
beaming  on  his  face,  the  sanctity  of  God,  like  a  halo, 


142  St.  Fa  thick. 

round  about  Jiim,  and  the  word  which  was  spread  before 
became  irresistible,  and  his  victory  was  all  the  greater  in 
the  land.  And  with  all  this  prayer,  this  poverty  of  life — 
for  he  went  through  the  land  lonely  and  on  foot,  and  it 
was  only  in  his  extreme  old  age  that  he  would  permit  the 
love  of  the  Irish  people  to  furnish  him  even  with  a  chariot 
in  which  to  be  carried  from  place  to  place — he  labored  all 
day  long  in  poverty,  content  with  the  merest  necessaries  of 
life,  in  unfailing  prayer,  and  in  fasting  and  in  humiliations  • 
for  in  his  confessions  he  begins  the  book :  "  I,  Patrick,  a 
sinner,  and  one  of  the  most  unworthy  of  men,"  yet  he  was 
at  the  time  one  of  the  most  distinguished  saints  of  the 
Church. 

Thus  the  Irish  people  beheld  in  him  an  illustration  of 
his  doctrine,  and  what  was  the  consequence  ?  The  most 
natural  in  the  world  for  a  lively,  generous,  impulsive,  and 
earnest  people  ;  they  saw  that  Patrick  was  in  earnest,  they 
became  earnest  like  him  ;  and  the  moment  they  received 
bis  doctrine  their  first  conclusion  was  :  As  we  believe  what 
he  tells  us,  so  we  must  live  as  he  lives.  The  consequence 
was  the  most  extraordinary  recorded  in  the  history  of  the 
world  :  the  whole  nation  became  a  nation  of  saints.  Mon- 
asteries sprang  up  in  every  quarter  of  the  land,  convents 
and  great  houses  for  recluses  covered  the  hills,  and  the 
valleys  were  crowded  with  hermits.  The  Church  and  Pope 
of  Rome,  who  expected  to  hear  of  the  grain  of  mustard 
sowed  in  the  soil  sprouting  up  here  and  there  and  crying 
loudly  for  martyrs'  blood,  the  pope  and  the  Church  were 
almost  instantly  amazed,  for  Patrick's  first  message  was  : 
"They  are  all  Christians,  they  are  all  Catholics,  and  they 
are  all  almost  saints."  But  how  grand,  how  magnifi- 
cent is  the  prospect  which  the  genius  of  history  points 
out  to  us !  It  is  true  we  have  to  go  back  far,  four- 
teen hundred  years,  we  have  to  go  back  through  many 
ages,  and  then  to  behold  Ireland  in  tije  first  light  of 
her  sanctity,  of  her  purity— Bridget  in  Kildare,  one  of 
the  most  glorious  and  brightest  of  the  Cliurch's  saints, 
leading  the  maidenhood  of  Ireland,  consecrated  to  holy 


St.  Patrick.  143 

purity ;  to  behold  Benignus,  the  bishop,  spreading  ^the 
sanctity  of  the  Church  in  his  own  example,  and  the 
father  of  monks;  to  hear  the  sweet  legend  of  Nelius 
of  the  Clean  Hand,  because  when  he  was  brought  a 
little  child  to  St.  Bridget  she  laid  her  hand  upon  him 
and  blessed  him,  and  said:  "This  child  will  grow  and 
become  a  priest,  and  attend  me  when  dying,  and  give  me 
the  Blessed  Sacrament  for  the  last  time."  And  when  the 
child  heard  this  he  wrapped  his  hand  up  in  a  clean  cloth 
and  touched  nothing  with  it  until  he  opened  it  to  receive 
the  chrism  of  his  consecration,  that  it  might  be  worthy  to 
take  the  Body  of  our  Lord  and  lay  it  on  the  virgin' s  lips. 
Patrick  received,  even  upon  this  earth,  the  reward  of 
the  apostleship  which  the  other  apostles  only  received 
in  heaven,  for  he  saw  his  labors  crowned  with  sanctity  on 
earth. 

And  now,  dearly  beloved,  we  may  perhaps  think  that 
which  grew  up  so  suddenly  would  fade  equally  suddenly, 
for  we  know  that  if  the  gourd  of  tlie  prophet  sprang  up  in 
one  night  and  formed  a  shade  under  which  he  took  his 
rest,  that  it  withered  as  speedily  away  when  a  little  worm 
gnawed  at  the  root.  Was  it  to  be  so  with  the  Church  of 
Ireland's  faith  and  Ireland's  sanctity  ;  was  it  to  wither  as 
quickly  as  it  sprang  up  ?  Answer  it,  O  ye  ages  !  answ^er 
it,  O  ye  nations  who  liave  tried  the  strength  of  this  root! 
Every  worm  that  could  assail  it  has  fixed  his  venomous 
teeth  in  it,  but  in  vain  ;  in  vain  the  fire  of  the  Dane  con- 
sumed the  land ;  it  could  waste  everything,  but  left  Ire- 
land's Catholicity  untouched  as  of  old ;  in  vain  came  the 
storm  of  successive  persecutions ;  in  vain  was  the  land 
wasted  over  and  over  again,  flooded  in  blood,  steeped  in 
tears  ;  in  vain  was  the  whole  aboriginal  race  strijjped  of 
everything  they  had  in  the  world  and  driven  out  to  die  in 
the  wasted  places  of  the  land — in  vain  all ;  everything  that 
earth  could  try,  that  hell  could  essay,  has  been  tried  in 
vain. 

Ireland's  Catholicity,  like  the  mountain  oak,  like  the 
cedar  of  Lebanon,  defied  every  storm  for  fourteen  hun- 


is 


144  St.  Patrick^ 

dred  years,  and,  blessed  be  God !  we  her  children  who 
are  in  her  arms  to-day  behold  that  ancient  truth  as 
fresh,  its  leaves  as  green,  its  tlowers  as  fragrant,  its  fruits 
as  rich  as  on  the  day  that  the  saint  lay  down  in  the  north- 
ern land  and  blessed  the  country  which  God  had  given 
him,  and,  dying,  said  these  last  words  in  the  Irish  lan- 
guage :  "  O  Ireland  !  this  is  my  prayer  and  this  is  my 
prophecy :  Other  nations  may  lose  all  that  God  gave  them  ; 
Ireland,  my  land,  will  never  lose  the  pure,  true  faith  which 
she  has  received ! "  She  has  not  lost  it ;  she  can  scarcely 
go  through  greater  trials  than  she  has  already.  Tiie  past 
is  the  clearest  guarantee  for  the  future.  Beloved  brethren, 
I  have  no  fear  for  the  faith  of  my  land,  but  I  call  upon 
you  to-day  to  do  what  our  fathers  did  of  old  whilst  you 
cling  to  the  faith — to  remember,  like  the  Irish  fourteen 
hundred  years  ago,  that  you  must  illustrate  that  faith  by 
sanctity  of  life.  If  you  believe  what  Patrick  taught, 
you  must  endeavor  to  live,  as  Patrick  lived,  sacramental 
lives,  lives  of  purity,  of  heroic  devotion  to  God  and  to  His 
holy  Church,  to  His  vicar  on  earth,  with  whom  Patrick 
bound  us,  so  that  when  we  come  to  heaven's  gate  and 
claim  entrance  tiiere,  on  the  strength  of  the  faitli  that 
Patrick  taught  us,  our  father  in  heaven,  who  is  praying 
for  us  to-day,  may  acknowledge  us  for  his  true  children 
and  say :  "They  are  mine,  my  likeness  is  upon  them  ;  they 
are  like  their  fathers  to  whom  I  preached ;  they  are  like 
th(4r  martyrs  from  whom  I  sprang  ;  they  have  to-day  the 
faith,  they  liave  finished  the  good  work.  Crown  them,  O 
liord !  as  Thou  hast  crow;ned  them  with  faith." 


St.  Ignatius. 


The  following  is  an  abstract  of  a  sermon  preached  by  Father  Burke  in  the 
Church,  of  St.  Francis  Xavier,  Dublin,  on  the  Feast  of  St.  Ignatius  of 
Loyola,  the  founder  of  the  Society  of  Jesus.    He  took  for  his  text : 

"  And  the  Lord  said  :  This  man  is  to  me  a  vessel  of  election  to  carry  my 
name  before  the  Gentiles  and  kings,  and  children  of  Israel,  for  I  will 
show  him  what  gi'eat  things  he  must  suffer  in  my  name." 

THESE  words  came  from  the  lips  of  our  Lord  and  Saviour 
Jesus  Christ  when  He  was  describing  the  character  of 
St.  Paul,  who  was  to  go  forth  in  His  name  to  convert  the 
nations  of  the  earth.  "This  man  is  to  me  a  vessel  of  elec- 
tion, followed  with  my  grace,  and  Spirit,  and  Word.  He 
shall  go  forth,  and  there  shall  be  this  sign  on  him — that 
the  burden  of  his  message  shall  be  the  glory  of  His  name. 
That  name  shall  be  pinned  to  his  brow  as  a  crown  of 
glory."  Tho  Lord  said  that  the  people  of  the  earth  should 
hear  the  Word  from  his  lips,  and  a  vision  of  grace  should 
spring  up  before  him.  He  should  suffer  for  His  name's 
sake— for  the  sake  of  that  name  which  is  the  glory,  the 
love,  and  the  message  unto  all  nations.  St.  Paul  was  the 
greatest  apostle,  the  greatest  of  founders  of  the  Church, 
described  by  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ.  The 
holy  Church  which  was  founded  by  the  Son  of  God  was 
founded  not  only  in  the  faith,  that  she  should  teach  the 
nations  of  the  earth  ;  but  she  was  also  founded  in  holiness, 
that  she  should  be  the  prolific  mother  of  saints.  As  she 
was  founded  in  fnith,  so  tlirough  the  grace  of  holiness  the 
Church  was  ev^er  able  to  produce  saints  as  great  as  St. 
Paul,  and  as  powerful  before  nations,  and  who  gloried  as 

145 


1-lG  St.  I gi^^  Tiers. 

mucli  as  lie  did  in  the  name  of  Jesus.  Fifteen  hundred 
years  had  passed  away  since  St.  Paul  died  outside  the 
walls  of  Rome,  with  the  word  of  Jesus  uttered  by  his  lips, 
still  struggling  in  the  agonies  of  death.  Fifteen  hundred 
years  after  his  death  a  saint  great  as  he — great  in  the 
name  that  was  engraved  on  his  heart,  and  great  in  the 
suffering  endured  for  the  name  of  Jesus — a  second  St. 
Paul,  was  given  to  the  world  in  the  person  of  St.  Ignatius 
Loyola,  whose  name  filled  the  Church  wiih  hope  and  re- 
sounds to-day  in  heaven.  We  have  come  together  for  two 
purposes  :  first,  to  honor  the  Lord  in  that  great  saint. 
"  Praise  ye  the  Lord  in  nis  saints  in  the  firmament  of  his 
power"  was  a  divine  command.  The  second  purpose  is 
to  consider  the  character,  the  work,  and  the  life  of  that 
great  servant  of  God,  and  to  apply  the  example  of  .his 
glorious  life  to  our  own  actions  and  souls.  We  will  con- 
sider the  personal  character  of  that  great  saint,  of  v.-hose 
life  we  will  listen  to  a  brief  sketch  ;  as  also  of  his  work  in 
the  Church  of  God,  which  affords  an  illustration  of  how 
wonderfully  the  character  of  the  Father  is  ever  reflected  in 
the  sanctity  and  graces  of  His  children.  We  should  dwell 
upon  the  life  of  St.  Ignatius  that  from  his  sanctity  we 
might  learn  the  secret  of  sanctity,  and,  imitating  him,  we 
might  find  out  the  way  to  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

In  the  kingdom  of  Spain — the  great,  grand,  magnificent 
mother  of  sahits,  the  privileged  nation,  winch,  beyond  all 
others,  has  produced  founders  of  great  religious  orders — 
in  lo91 — nearly  three  hundred  years  ago — St.  Ignatius  was 
bo  in,  and  at  that  time  Martin  Luther  was  nine  years  old. 
These  two  grew  together  under  the  eye  of  God,  who  sees 
all  things.  One  grew  into  infernal  proportions  to  his  last 
av/f ul  heresy  ;  he  grew  and  strengthened  for  the  purpose 
of  destroying,  if  possible,  the  indestructible  Church  of 
God  and  ruin  the  nations.  The  other  grew  in  strength,  in 
magnificent  proportions,  splendid  in  body,  noble  in  mind 
and  soul,  and  ardent  in  devotion.  He  grew  in  greatness, 
and  in  that  chivalrous  nature  which  God  made  the  basis 
of  his  superhuman  work.    He  grew  to  combat  the  destruc- 


St.  Ignatius.  147 

Cion  which  the  arch-heretic  Luther  endeavored  to  bring  on 
the  Church  of  God.  He  was  of  noble  birth,  and  came  into 
the  world  surrounded  with  everything  which  tliat  world 
could  yield  him,  and  for  a  time  the  youth  seemed  to  lend 
himself  to  the  practices  of  the  world  and  the  "  virtues"  of 
the  court.  He  was  brought  up  at  court,  trained  in  courtly 
manners  and  courtly  etiquette.  He  was  educated  behtting- 
ly  for  a  man  in  his  exalted  station  of  life.  He  was  given 
to  reading  stories  of  great  deeds  of  valor  performed  by  the 
nobles.  He  was  generous  to  a  fault,  and  brave  even  to 
rashness,  and  it  was  but  natural  that,  when  a  young  man, 
he  selected  the  profession  of  arms.  Then  he  enured  him- 
self for  some  years  to  all  the  hardships  of  a  soldier's  life. 
Ho  was  admired  by  his  fellow-officers  for  his  great  daring. 
No  forlorn  hope  or  beleaguered  city  had  teiTors  for  him  ; 
he  gloried  to  stand  in  the  breach,  and  for  his  great  bravery 
his  fellow-soldiers  loved  and  admired  him.  There  was  in 
him  a  singular  combination  of  mind  and  body.  He  had 
all  virtues  and  no  vices,  yet  he  was  not  a  holy  or  a  devout 
man.  All  his  virtues  seemed  the  natural  growth  of  his 
magnificent  person.  He  was  generous  to  a  fault,  and 
always  gave  to  the  poor  what  he  had.  His  purity  was 
more.  No  word  of  obscenity  ever  escaped  his  lips,  and 
on  that  account  the  reserve  observed  in  his  presence  could 
not  have  been  greater  had  a  consecrated  priest  or  holy  man 
been  present.  He  loved,  and  his  love  was  a  pure  one. 
His  ideal  beauty  was  of  that  chaste,  venerable  form  that 
woald  arise  before  the  romantic  imagination  of  a  mediaeval 
knight ;  it  was  a  fair  and  splendid  ideal,  and  his  love  had 
no  grosser  element.  At  thirty  years  of  age  he  stood  on 
the  ramparts  of  a  severely  beleaguered  city.  He  had  only 
a  handful  of  soldiers  around  him.  His  enemy  was  a  large 
host,  but  there  he  stood,  brave  and  resolute,  encouraging 
those  who  surrounded  him.  In  his  left  hand  he  held  the 
banner  of  Spanish  liberty,  while  hailstones  of  shot  and 
shell  rained  round  him,  and  the  besieged  held  out  until  he 
was  knocked  down  and  seriously  w^ounded,  and  the  enemy 
entered  the  city  over  his  prostrate  body.     His  defeat  under 


148  St.  Ignatius.  "¥ 

the  circumstances  was  grander  than  a  victory.  The  whole 
world  rang  with  his  name  while  he  lay  stricken  in  body 
and  tortured  with  sickness.  He  was  spared  from  death, 
and  his  mind  turned  to  the  God  of  heaven  and  to  prayer. 
He  had  a  vision  of  St.  Peter,  who  said  to  him :  "  Thou  shalt 
live,  and  regain  thy  strength." 

He  was  not  told  why  he  was  to  live,  but  while  he  was 
lying  on  his  bed  of  sickness  he  sent  for  some  works  of 
chivalry  and  romance,  and  they  could  not  be  supplied  to 
him.  The  only  book  in  the  place  was  the  "Lives  of  the 
Saints."  At  first  it  seemed  rather  dry,  as  he  was  not  given 
to  spiiitual  reading,  and  was  no  lover  of  holy  books.  He 
could  not  help  reading  the  book,  he  had  no  other  ;  and  as 
he  read  of  the  brave,  heroic  power  and  mighty  intellect  he 
asked  himself  if  men  had  really  lived  such  lives  as  those, 
and  if  they  had  fought  their  way  and  carved  their  entrance 
into  heaven  by  such  holy  work  as  theirs.  He  asked  him- 
self why  he  should  waste  time  in  endeavoring  to  spread 
dominion  for  earthly  kings,  who  must  perish  as  well  as 
himself,  when  he  might  do  battle  for  the  kingdom  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  earn  for  himself  a  place  in  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  A  voice  said  to  him  :  "Thou  shalt  find  work  for 
which  the  Lord  hath  created  thee."  God  had  not  given  to 
the  man  strength  and  courage  to  build  up  for  himself  a 
passing  name,  but  he  was  created  for  God's  own  purpose. 
He  shut  the  book,  and,  lifting  up  his  arms  to  God,  resolv- 
ed  to  be  a  saint.  His  courage  remained  with  him  ;  he  was 
a  soldier  in  the  beginning ;  he  was  destined  to  be  a  soldier 
unto  the  end.  His  feeling  of  love  remained,  but  not  love 
for  the  same  ideal ;  for  a  vision  of  Mary,  the  Mother  of 
God,  the  Virgin  of  virgins,  appeared  to  him  clothed  in  the 
sun,  with  the  moon  beneath  her  feet,  and  a  crown  of  twelve 
stars  on  her  head.  It  was  then  that  he  pledged  himself  to 
stand  in  the  bastions  of  the  Church  and  do  battle  for  God. 
That  took  place  in  1621.  He  rose  from  his  sick-bed,  his 
arm  as  strong  as  of  old,  his  courage  as  high,  his  resolu- 
tion as  grand  ;  all  that  was  good  in  the  man  had  returned, 
all  that  was  not  was  cast  out.    He  scourged  his  flesh,  so 


,.  St.  Ignatius.  149 

that  it  miglit  be  obedient,  and  after  three  years,  partly- 
spent  in  Spain,  partly  in  Italy,  and  partly  in  the  Holy 
Land,  he  studied  for  the  priesthood  in  the  University  of 
Paris.  It  was  there  his  saintly  nature  became  matured 
and  developed.  It  was  there,  too,  that  a  vision  of  his 
mission  came  to  him  ;  the  vision  began  to  look  out  into  the 
distance,  and,  hearing  of  the  heresy  of  the  nations,  St. 
Ignatius  comprehended.  It  seemed  as  if  he  heard  a  voice 
saying:  "Arise,  O  man!  whose  heart  never  failed,  and 
who  is  a  lover  of  Jesus  Christ ;  seize  on  a  few  of  those 
youths  around  you,  and  lay  hold  of  all  this  reviving  of 
pagan  literature  and  this  heresy  ;  go  forth  into  every 
clime,  carrying  my  name  with  thee." 

The  young  Spanish  professor  whose  eloquence  and 
learning  dazzled  his  fellows— Francis  Xavier — was  in  the 
same  college,  and  Ignatius  prevailed  upon  him  and  eight 
others  to  consecrate  themselves  to  the  Lord.  When  asked 
what  name  their  new  religious  society  should  have  Igna- 
tius, with  the  dearest  name  still  uppermost,  said,  "Jesus," 
and  thus  it  took  the  name  of  the  Society  of  Jesus.  The 
consecration  of  the  order  took  place  in  1535,  on  the  Feast 
of  the  Assumption.  St.  Ignatius  was  made  general  su- 
perior of  the  order.  For  fifteen  years  he  was  increasing 
every  day  in  sanctity.  He  died  in  1556,  having  wisely 
governed  the  order,  founded  hundreds  of  colleges,  aud  sent 
missionaries  to  all  parts  of  the  world,  whom  he  directed 
from  his  central  station  in  Rome.  His  body  was  buried 
under  the  great  altar  of  the  Jesuit  chapel  in  Rome.  His 
literary  works,  "Spiritual  Exercises"  and  "The  Consti- 
tution of  the  Society  of  Jesus,"  were  models  of  purity  and 
literary  ability,  and  were  most  valuable  to  the  Church. 
They  were  remarkable  for  deep,  clear,  profound  know- 
ledge, and  even  Lord  Bacon,  a  Protestant,  has,  in  one  of 
his  works,  paid  the  highest  tribute  of  praise  to  the  system 
of  training  practised  in  the  colleges  of  the  order  founded 
by  St.  Ignatius,  which  order  was  feared  and  persecuted 
throughout  the  world  as  the  soldiers  of  Christ,  ever  to  the 
front  to  stand  in  the  breach,  guarding  the  faith  and  receiv- 


150  St.  Ignatius. 

ing  in  tlieir  own  persons  insult  and  persecution.  Yet 
when  they  were  persecuted  and  banished  from  their  homes 
Ireland  was  ever  ready  to  afford  them  a  refuge  and  to  wel- 
come them  to  her  Catholic  bosom,  there  to  rest  awhile 
their  weary  heads.  (The  very  reverend  preacher  conclud- 
ed with  a  sublime  peroration.) 


St.  Francis  Xavier. 


The  Feast  of  St.  Francis  Xavier,  the  Apostle  of  the  Indies,  was  celebrated  in 
the  Church  of  St.  Xavier,  Dublin,  Decembers,  1877.  The  sermon  was 
delivered  by  Father  Burke,  who  took  for  his  text :  *'  God  is  wonderful  in 
His  saints." 

npHE  triumphs  of  Almighty  God  are  made  manifest  in  all 
-*-  His  creations.  The  very  heavens  speak  the  glory  of 
God,  and  the  silent  stars  proclaim  His  power.  The  office 
of  nature  is  eloquent  in  having  its  beauties  revealed  in 
every  new  form  of  creation.  How  much  more  are  His  dis- 
tinct attributes  rendered  conspicuous  and  wonderful  when 
we  contemplate  His  saints,  when  we  contemplate  these 
mighty  living  officers  who  proclaim  His  name  and  glory, 
when  we  contemplate  those  who  at  the  highest  were  so 
united  to  God  as  to  be  lost  in  good  deeds  to  themselves, 
and  to  live  only  for  God — devoted,  with  aU  the  energy  of 
a  great  nature,  not  to  any  personal  or  worldly  thing,  but 
only  faithful  to  the  Word  of  God,  and  so  devoted  to  Him 
as  to  be  able  to  command  the  elements  and  to  exalt  them- 
selves for  Him  !  God  manifested  Himself  by  instructing 
and  by  the  wonderful  revelations  in  His  saints.  It  was 
through  His  saints  that  He  provided  for  all  the  wants  of 
man.  Three  hundred  years  ago,  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
when  there  were  disloyalty  to  authority,  imperial  changes, 
despotism,  the  pulling  down  of  laws,  the  sweeping  away 
of  ancient  universities,  and  disruption  in  all  those  elements 
that  constitute  civil,  social,  and  religious  society,  this 
great  order  of  Jesus  Christ  was  established.  Often  in  that 
century  the  voice  was  demure  of  those  who  spoke  in  the 

161 


153  St.  Francis  Xavier. 

language  of  faith.  In  that  century  it  was  to  be  despised 
by  man.  Up  to  this  period  all  religious  belief  was  found- 
ed upon  one  and  upon  the  only  principle  upon  which  it 
can  rest — namely,  the  essential  truthfulness  of  God,  the 
essential  truthfulness  of  the  utterances  of  God,  and  the 
invariable  truthfulness  of  the  living  consciousness  of  God 
— namely,  the  Catholic  Church.  Every  man  who  believed 
in  the  Catholic  Church  acknowledged  the  authority  of  the 
Church,  his  mother ;  but  at  this  time  her  authority  was  to 
be  broken  up,  the  very  basis  of  her  foundation  was  to  be 
shifted  from  the  rock  upon  which  Jesus  Christ,  their  Lord, 
built  it,  and  there  was  to  be  set  up  in  her  place  mere 
human  opinions  and  private  judgments.  Under  the  spread- 
ing rays  of  the  universal  increase  there  was  a  thirst  for 
knowledge  of  every  kind.  Notwithstanding  that  at  the 
time  the  Greek  Empire  had  just  fallen,  the  libraries  of 
Constantinople  had  been  all  carried  away  and  found  re- 
fuge in  Western  Europe,  the  Greek  and  Latin  schools 
were  discovered  disseminating  knowledge  on  every  side, 
and  those  who  never  read  before  began  to  read.  Wonder- 
ful were  the  things  realized  in  foreign  lands.  New  coun- 
tries were  discovered  in  the  West,  and  at  this  time  the 
Catholic  Church  seemed  to  be  in  danger,  if  ever  in  danger 
she  could  be  supposed  to  be.  The  great  centre  of  know- 
ledge was  removed,  and  insidiously  turned  into  schools 
and  universities  of  Europe.  The  new  spirit  was  awake, 
and  now  it  was  for  the  Lord  God  in  His  supreme  wisdom 
to  investigate  the  things  that  were  to  come,  and  make  pre- 
parations in  the  Church— to  furnish  her  with  new  weapons 
to  fight  the  new  wars,  and  with  her  champions  to  come 
forth  and  wait  for  the  signs  by  which  men  were  to  know. 
In  these  days  the  University  of  Paris  was  the  greatest  seat 
of  learning  in  the  world.  The  youth  of  Christian  Europe, 
by  the  discoveries  of  new  arts  and  sciences,  were  attracted 
there.  In  the  midst  of  all  these  there  came  from  Germany 
a  youth  of  Christian  principles  and  allegiance  to  the 
Church  to  be  a  lecturer  in  the  university — a  youth  of 
much  ability,  though  yet  a  student  and  heir  to  an  illustri- 


St.  Francis  Xavier.  153 

ous  name.    Men  told  of  him  how  he  had  already  distin- 
guished himself  in  the  battle-field. 

The  great  name  went  before  him.  The  student  of  Paris, 
Ignatius  Loyola,  who  had  asserted  bravery  and  honor  in 
the  face  of  the  world,  was  among  them  ;  but  how  did  they 
find  him  ?  They  found  him  broken  with  fasting  and  mor- 
tification. He  seemed  to  have  forgotten  himself,  forgotten 
his  history,  forgotten  the  ancient  passions  that  made  him 
the  honored  foreigner,  the  great  prize  the  world  had  made 
— this  man,  who  seemed  to  know  nothing,  to  think  of  no- 
thing, to  live  for  nothing,  to  speak  of  nothing  but  love  for 
the  Church  of  God.  He  moved  among  those  students,  and 
at  once  a  feeling  spread  that  the  Church  of  their  God  had 
attached  itself  to  the  university,  and  that  the  man  of  God 
was  in  it.  There  was  also  in  the  university  a  young 
Spaniard,  equally  noble,  far  more  distinguished  than  Ig- 
natius in  all  the  competitions  of  the  sciences  of  man,  and 
who  had  been  for  nine  years  previously  in  the  university 
— who  had  made  his  mark,  and  who  was  spoken  of  as  the 
greatest  and  most  industrious  of  young  doctors — a  man 
who  was  chief  of  all  in  learning  and  philosophy.  He  re- 
tained a  great  name.  This  was  Francis  Xavier,  who  came 
from  Pampeluna,  at  the  foot  of  the  Pyrennees  Mountains  ; 
young — for  he  was  only  twenty-one  years  of  age — already 
known,  strong  of  body,  vigorous  of  intellect,  and  beautiful 
to  behold ;  in  manner  generous,  soft  in  his  affections  and 
heart,  and  with  a  capacity  to  compete  with  the  world  in 
science.  Eut  in  the  midst  of  all  this  worldliness  there  was 
one  in  this  university  that  recognized  that  the  vassal  of 
nations  was  Xavier' s  joy.  Thus  at  this  period  this 
learned  foreigner  was  teaching,  to  the  great  admiration  of 
those  who  heard  him,  in  the  university.  He  descended 
one  day  from  his  chair,  having  charmed  the  professors  and 
students  around,  amongst  whom  was  Xavier,  who  v/ent  to 
his  room  filled  with  thoughts  of  his  ambition,  when  Igna- 
tius crosses  his  path,  looks  at  him  with  sad,  reproachful 
eyes,  nears  him,  and  drops  into  his  ears,  in  the  voice  of  the 
Gospel :  "  Suffer  what  you  will,  it  benefits  man  nothing  to 


154  St.  Francis  Xaviee. 

gain  the  whole  world  if  he  lose  his  own  sonl,"  A  wonder 
from  God  was  revealed ;  the  man  who  spoke  was  gone. 
Was  Xuvier  going  to  yield  himself  to  the  world  and  take 
the  attractions  and  pleasures  which  swept  to  him  \  Again 
and  again  Ignatius  crossed  the  path  of  Xavier,  and  day 
after  day  did  he  repeat  to  him :  "  What  shall  it  benefit 
thee  to  gain  the  whole  world  if  thon  lose  thy  soul  ?" 
Xavier  took  thought  and  consulted.  There  were  five  other 
students  in  the  university,  all  of  them  men  most  distin- 
guished in  every  walk  of  science,  men  who  have  left  behind 
them  in  the  annals  of  the  Church  sacred  and  glorious  names. 
Ignatius  gathered  them  all.  And  now  to  place  the  free- 
dom of  confidence  which  was  needed  in  the  foundation  of 
the  Society  of  Jesus,  and  then  to  plan  the  great,  wonderful 
work  which  God  had  pleased  him  to  do— in  His  wisdom  He 
is  eqnal  to  all  the  wants  of  His  Church — this  silent  patn- 
arch,  soldier,  and  prince  now  turned  to  God  with  all  his 
youth,  and  began  to  brood  on  the  mysteries  of  the  time. 
He  saw  the  world  was  changing,  and  he  saw  a  new  spirifc 
was  coming  up.  He  considered  three  laws — self-denial, 
devotedness  to  some  purpose,  and  organization.  Around 
him  he  saw  his  own  countrymen  going  forth  to  unknown 
seas,  sacrificing  their  lives  in  the  paths  of  discovery  of 
every  kind.  He  observed  men  ready  to  give  their  lives  in 
the  great  cause  of  scientific  power.  He  saw  these  men  de- 
nying every  pleasure  of  the  living  ;  he  saw  them  day  after 
day  investigating  until  they  came  to  some  work  of  dis- 
covery. Finally,  he  saw  the  world  organizing  itself — the 
whole  world  forming  itself  into  societies — and  said :  ' '  What 
these  men  do  for  the  world  for  self,  I  will  do  for  God  and 
His  Church.*' 

This  was  the  grand  idea  of  the  young  patriarch,  and 
afterwards  his  doing.  He  asked  the  six  young  men  if  they 
were  willing  to  die  for  God  ;  secondly,  if  they  were  willing 
to  devote  themselves  to  the  purpose  of  God  and  His 
Church  ;  and  thirdly,  if  they  would  form  themselves  into 
an  organization,  founded  pre-eminently  on  this  one  great 
principle— namely,  the  one  mind  carefully  formed  with  in- 


St,  Francis  Xavier.  155 

tegrity  and  wisdom,  whose  greatness  and  honesty  should 
command  the  united  action  of  them  all,  and  whose  intel- 
lectual light  they  were  to  carry  out  in  obedience  to  the 
piinciples  of  this  one  mind.  Francis  Xavier  was  the  first 
to  understand  the  decided  mind  and  explain  that  which 
Ignatius  and  the  others  followed.  And  so  in  the  year  1534 
these  seven  men  went  up  to  an  oratory  on  the  hill  of 
Montmartre,  near  Paris,  and  there  they  bowed  themselves 
to  God,  and  swore  their  lives  away  to  the  Church  of  God. 
Now,  from  that  hour  began  the  history  of  the  Society  of 
Jesus  Christ— fifteen  hundred  and  thirty-four,  nearly  three 
centuries  and  a  half  ago.  Through  all  these  years  it  has 
lived  in  the  face  of  the  whole  world  and  before  the  Church 
of  God,  and  has  carried  out  the  grand  purpose  for  which 
it  was  founded.  It  has  spread  self-denial,  devotedness, 
and  organization,  and  is  able  to  cope  with  the  strictest 
form  of  political  organization.  During  that  period  this 
society  has  been  the  object  of  continued,  constant,  and 
oppressive  persecution  outside  the  Church.  With  what 
result?  That  the  society  and  the  Catholic  Church  are 
feared  throughout  the  world  as  much  as  ever  they  were. 
For  eight  years  after  his  surrender  to  the  Church,  Ignatius, 
Francis  Xavier,  and  their  colleagues  spread  the  light  of 
the  Gospel  under  their  spiritual  father  and  patriarch,  and 
under  the  influence  of  his  mighty  mind.  During  these 
years  he  was  engaged  in  labors  for  the  Church.  He  partly 
labored  in  Venice,  visiting  the  poor  and  tending  the  sick  ; 
no  sacrifice  was  too  great ;  no  mortification  or  patience  too 
terrible ;  no  revolting  case  of  leprosy  too  disgusting  for 
him  to  attend  or  relieve.  And  thus  did  he  live  until  1541, 
by  which  time,  after  years  under  Ignatius' s  guidance,  he 
found  that  the  affections  of  that  large  and  generous  heart 
all  belonged  to  the  Church  of  God.  When  Ignatius  dis- 
covered this  he  determined  that  his  apostolic  son  should  go 
forth  to  preach,  and  here  was  a  work  put  up  before  him. 
King  John  III.  of  Portugal,  a  most  religious  prince, 
found  himself  the  possessor  of  enormous  territories  along 
the  shores  of  the  Indian  Ocean  and  towards  the  Northern 


156  St.  Francis  Xavier, 

Pacific,  inhabited  with  nxillions  of  uncivilized  people,  all 
in  the  darkness  of  idolatry  or  of  the  equally  dark  idolatry 
of  Mohammedanism,  and  the  consciousness  of  this  smote  the 
king ;  but  the  awful  feeling  came  upon  him  that  the  work 
of  their  conversion  demanded  a  saint,  and  in  the  sixteenth 
century  it  was  hard  to  find  saints.  Saint  Teresa  was  in  a 
cloister,  and  Saint  John  of  the  Cross  was  engaged  in  his 
work  of  reform.  But  a  saint  to  go  out  and  captivate  the 
mind,  to  charm  all  the  race  of  men — where  was  such  to  be 
found  ? 

A  young  student  of  Paris  told  his  majesty  that  Ignatius 
in  the  university  had  with  him  some  others  that  were  all 
that  the  king  needed.  Accordingly  a  mandate  was  re- 
ceived from  the  Sovereign  Pontiff,  and  Ignatius  was  called 
upon  to  send  two  of  his  companions  to  spread  the  doctrine 
of  the  Catholic  Church  amongst  millions  and  millions. 
Ignatius  gathered  to  his  list  his  apostolic  son,  Francis 
Xavier  ;  and  even  as  the  heart  of  the  brave  soldier  bounded 
with  joy  when  the  hour  of  battle  came  to  send  him  to  death, 
but  still  to  glory,  so  did  the  heart  exult  in  him  when  he 
was  doomed  to  go  and  preach  the  Gospel.  We  find  liim, 
therefore,  in  1541  sailing  for  the  Indies,  and  after  thirteen 
months'  voyage  he  arrived  at  Goa.  Then  he  began  his 
labors.  It  was  not  merely  preaching  the  Gospel  to  the 
citizens ;  Xavier  undertook  to  preach  it  to  whole  nations. 
For  ten  years  and  a  half  he  labored  in  India  proper,  partly 
in  the  land  adjoining  the  Indian  coast,  partly  in  the  quar- 
ters of  the  Japanese  Empire,  going  from  nation  to  nation, 
receiving  insults,  speaking  to  the  assembled  high -priest- 
hood, scattering  the  Gospel  from  land  to  land,  until  his 
converts  were  reckoned  not  by  thousands  but  by  hundreds 
of  thousands.  He  preached  the  Gospel  from  morning  until 
night,  and  with  the  touch  of  his  hand  or  with  the  sign  of 
the  cross  the  lepers  were  cured  and  the  paralyzed  rose  up 
and  renewed  their  stand.  A  pagan  father  came  to  him 
and  said:  "0  thou  creature  from  a  foreign  land,  and 
Christian  of  a  stranger  dark  !  thou  sayest  that  thy  Church 
is  the  true  Church.    If  thy  God  be  the  true  God,  give  me 


St.  Francis  Xavier.  157 

back  my  child  that  I  have  left  dead  at  home  "  ;  and  Xavier 
answered  :  "  Go  back  and  thou  shalt  find  her  living."  The 
pagan  father  went  back  and  found  the  young  maiden  well, 
and  putting  her  arms  around  him  she  said :  "  My  soul  had 
gone  forward  and  a  demon  was  about  to  catch  me,  when  a 
man  of  strange  appearance  came  and  brought  me  away." 
The  pagan  father  brought  his  child  to  Francis  Xavier,  and 
she  exclaimed :  "  Oh  !  it  is  he.  This  is  the  saint  that  saved 
me  from  the  demon."  On  another  occasion,  while  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Malacca,  a  mother  flung  herself  down  at 
his  feet  in  great  grief,  saying  :  "0  father  !  man  of  God, 
my  daughter  is  dead  and  is  three  days  buried."  The  glory 
of  the  living  God  flashes  from  his  eyes,  and  in  the  power 
of  the  Spirit  he  prays,  and,  turning  to  the  woman,  says, 
"Good  woman,  open  the  grave  and  thou  wilt  find  tliy 
daughter  living  there."  Brought  back  from  the  very  cor- 
ruption of  death  by  the  saint  of  God  !  Yet  all  this  time, 
night  and  day,  he  continued  in  the  course  of  the  conversion 
of  nations.  They  found  him  writing  home  to  Ignatius ; 
he  never  took  a  pen  in  his  hand  to  write  to  him  but  in  a 
kneeling  position.  He  moved  not  without  his  counsel. 
Xavier' s  was  the  voice  that  spoke,  Xavier' s  was  the  hand 
that  was  uplifted,  but  the  soul  that  guided  Xavier  was 
that  of  Ignatius.  The  society  was  growing  at  home  ;  the 
troubled  spirits  of  heresy  and  infidelity  were  starting  up, 
and,  starting  as  they  were,  Ignatius  was  increasing  the 
number  of  laborers  in  his  field.  No  thought  broke  upon 
the  grand  mind  of  the  apostle,  no  thought  communicated 
with  him.  Xavier  was  aspiring  to  be  the  evangelistic 
apostle  in  the  great  country  of  Asia.  From  Japan  he 
was  to  pass  to  China,  astonish  that  country,  and  pass  from 
China  to  Siberia,  still  spreading  the  light  of  the  Gospel. 

This  was  a  vast  design,  and  filled  the  mighty  mind  of 
the  saint,  and  he  gathered  himself  up  to  fulfil  it.  He 
sailed  for  China  and  landed  at  Cochin,  Just  opposite  to  the 
quarter  he  was  about  to  invade  for  God.  He  lost  half  the 
sailors  he  had  employed  through  sickness,  and  he  knew 
that  death  awaited  him ;  he  almost  told  the  time.     He  had 


158  St.  Francis  Xavier. 

two  great  saints  witli  him  who  came  of  a  soldier  race.  He 
smiled  in  the  face  of  deatli ;  three  times  was  lie  ship- 
wrecked. Death  was  shuddering  around  him,  and  yet  he 
had  ins  work  to  do  ;  but  he  was  abandoned  by  the  sailors. 
He  was  then  only  forty-six  years  of  age.  In  one  of  his 
letters  to  his  brethren  at  home  he  expressed  himself  thus  : 
*'If  God  be  to  me  what  He  has  hitherto  been,  and  if  He 
give  to  me  ten  years  of  life,  I  will  go  through  Asia,  Tur- 
key, and  the  northern  parts."  The  apostle  was  in  the 
bloom  of  his  life,  in  the  strength  of -his  great  learning, 
but  God  called  him,  in  the  jcstasy  of  his  longing,  to  crown 
him  for  his  love.  Abandoned  by  his  comrades,  stricken 
down  with  fatal  fever — the  very  blood  in  his  veins  nearly 
burning — he  lay  down  on  the  shores  of  Sancinn,  and 
turned  his  weary  eyes  towards  his  land.  After  a  time  the 
pains  of  death  came  upon  him,  and  now  another  land 
opened  before  him  ;  now,  with  the  pallor  of  death  on  the 
face  of  neglect,  he  threw  out  his  dying  arms  in  the  ecstasy 
of  joy,  cried  out  His  name,  and  exclaimed  :  ''^  Inte  Domine 
speravi.,  nan  confundar  in  ccternum,''^  and  died.  Glorious 
soul,  which,  proudly  crowned,  escaping  from  a  body 
broken  and  braised  by  self-mortification,  emaciated  by 
fasting,  growing  old  before  his  time,  passed  to  the  heavens ! 
Without  a  friend  or  a  hand  to  moisten  his  lips  that  soul 
passed  away  to  its  Judge.  In  less  than  one  hundred  years 
after,  in  1628,  his  Holiness  Paul  V.  canonized  this  saint, 
and  well  he  might. 

Tliat  poor,  broken,  emaciated  saint  was  found  three 
days  after  in  the  tabernacle  where  he  died,  uncorrupted, 
fresh  as  ever,  so  much  so  that  when  they  came  upon  him 
they  all  ciied  out:  "He  is  not  dead!  He  is  alive!" 
Entering  the  city  of  Malacca,  to  which  the  saint  was 
brouglit,  the  bishops  and  priests  and  the  principal  citizens 
of  the  town  came  in  procession.  There  was  a  pestilence 
raging  in  the  city,  and  at  the  moment  the  body  of  St. 
Xavier  crossed  the  city,  that  moment  the  dying  recovered 
health  and  the  very  signs  of  pestilence  ceased.  The  blind 
were  led  to  him,  and  the  moment  the  uncorrupted  hand 


St.  Francis  Xavihr.  159 

would  move  towards  the  blind  eyes  they  were  open.  The 
most  astounding  miracles  occurred  every  day  during  iiis 
life,  until  tlie  pagans  were  obliged  to  invoke  his  instruc- 
tions and  proclaim  Christianity  in  the  Indies.  TJie  exam- 
ple of  his  life  tauglit  them  many  things.  He  consented, 
on  the  day  of  his  vow  to  do  good  in  the  hands  of  Ignatius, 
to  surrender  his  life,  with  all  hopes  and  pleasures,  to  God. 
He  died  for  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Christ,  and  sprang  up 
again  into  another  life.  If  there  be  any  one  willing  to 
adopt  a  like  course,  let  him  surrender  himself  and  cast  liis 
life  into  that  sacred  cause,  and  then  will  he  live.  The 
army  that  the  apostle  of  the  Indies  left  behind  him  stands 
to-day  as  it  did  of  old — ^first  in  the  army  of  God.  It  has 
mustered  together  from  every  land,  and  carried  the  name 
of  Jesus,  aided  and  assisted  by  the  hand  of  Jesus  Christ. 


St,  Vincent  de  Paul, 


The  following  is  an  abridged  report  of  a  sermon  delivered  by  Father  Burke 
on  the  feast  of  St.  Vincent  de  Paul,  July  19, 1877,  in  the  beautiful  church 
of  the  Vincentian  Order,  Sunday's  Well,  Cork.  The  charity  of  the  great 
saint  is  strikingly  poitrayed.  After  the  first  Gospel  Father  Burke  as- 
cended the  pulpit  and  gave  the  following  text : 

"  I  found  David  a  man  according  to  my  own  heart.  With  my  holy  oil  I 
anointed  him." 

THESE  words  are  found  in  the  Book  of  Psalms.  Among 
-■-  the  many  wonderful  w^orks  of  God,  the  greatest  and 
most  wonderful  of  all  is  His  saints ;  therefore  the  Scrip- 
ture tells  us  that  God  was  wonderful  in  His  saints.  We 
are  told  to  look  on  them,  to  contemplate  them,  to  admire 
them,  and  in  them  and  tlirough  them  to  give  the  praise 
most  acceptable  to  Almighty  God.  But  why  is  God  so 
wonderful  in  His  saints  ?  Because  the  highest  effects  of 
God's  omnipotence  came  forth  both  in  the  order  of  His 
nature  and  the  order  of  His  grace.  There  have  been  saints 
of  God  who  were  triumphs  of  divine  power  both  in  the 
order  of  nature  and  the  order  of  grace — in  the  order  of 
nature  because  God,  when  He  intended  to  create  a  saint, 
gave  to  that  being  a  strong,  a  sweet,  and  a  high  and  perfect 
nature.  And  if  there  be  aught  in  the  elements  of  that 
nature  that  may  be  repugnant  to  sanctity  and  to  the  obli- 
gation of  His  highest  creation.  He  gave  to  that  saint  a 
strength  and  a  power  of  will  and  a  determination  of  action 
by  which  all  that  might  be  faulty  or  imperfect  in  nature 
might  be  overcome  and  constantly  put  away  ;  so  that  God's 
work  even  here,  as  saints,  would  be  the  brightest  and  most 


St.  Vincent  be  Paul.  161 

generous  and  most  beautiful  of  all  His  creations.  But  no, 
this  foundation  of  nature  was  only  the  beginning  of  the 
works  of  God  in  His  saints.  It  was  only  when  they  were 
thus  prepared,  thus  strengthened,  and  thus  chastened  and 
subdued,  and  made  conformable  in  purity  and  in  all  other 
natural  virtues  to  His  heart,  that  the  Almigli  ty  God  poured 
out  on  them  the  vial  containing  His  holy  oil  of  superior 
charity  and  sanctity.  And,  therefore.  He  first  formed 
them  unto  His  own  heart,  and  then  with  His  holy  oil  He 
anointed  them.  And  what  was  the  unction  of  which  the 
Holy  Ghost  spoke  \  It  was  the  anointing  of  high  charity, 
of  the  highest  form  of  all  virtue,  in  which  all  the  virtues 
meet,  as  all  inferior  and  partial  things  are  found  in  the 
most  perfect  and  complete  things.  Therefore  charity  was 
said  to  be  the  law  and  love  of  the  perfect,  the  bond  of  per- 
fection, and  he  that  loveth.  has  acquired  all  the  virtues 
and  fulfilled  all  the  law. 

Let  us  apply  all  those  principles  to  the  man  whose 
name  is  upon  the  lips  of  the  Churcli  to-day  in  praise,  in 
admiration,  in  benediction  to  God,  because  in  a  dark  and 
dreary  age  He  gave  us  so  great  a  saint ;  let  us  apply  those 
principles  to  the  man  whose  glory  was  celebrated  by  the 
Church  triumphant  in  heaven,  sung  by  the  angels,  admired 
by  the  saints,  and  from  whom  to-day  God  received  so  large 
a  measure  of  thanksgiving  and  glory  for  the  great  St.  Yin- 
cent. 

First  of  all,  he  was  a  man  after  God's  own  heart,  even 
after  the  order  of  nature.  It  was  towards  the  close  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  in  the  year  1575,  that  he  was  born,  in 
the  province  of  Gascony,  in  France.  His  parents  were 
holy  people  in  humble  circumstances,  but  deriving  their 
nobility  from  the  true  source  of  all  nobility — the  purity  and 
sanctity  of  life.  He  was  one  out  of  five  children,  and  they 
were  all  reared  in  the  fear  and  love  of  God  by  their  pious 
parents. 

All  tliQ,  children  were  good  and  pious,  but  the  child 
Vincent,  from  the  days  of  his  infancy,  began  to  show  signs 
of  strange  and  extraordinary  holiness.     His  idea  of  amuse- 


163  St.  Vincent  be  Paul. 

merit  and  recreation  was  to  steal  into  some  qniet  place  and 
there  pour  out  his  young  infant  soul  in  prayer.  He  seemed 
to  know  intuitively  all  the  ]3rinciples  of  divine  faith.  As 
he  grew  from  infancy  to  childhood  every  grace  seemed  to 
grow  with  him,  until  at  length  he  came  to  that  age  when 
the  passions  begin  to  be  stirred  by  the  demons  of  iniquity. 
But  Vincent  was  as  pure  as  an  angel  of  God.  Whatever 
faults  were  in  him  he  painfully  and  laboriously  cast  out  of 
his  character,  until  they  found  him  at  twenty-five  years  of 
age — after  years  of  study,  seven  of  which  were  spent  at  the 
University  of  Toulouse — fitted  for  the  priesthood  in  the 
necessary  learning  and  all  other  acquirements,  but,  above 
all,  fitted  for  the  priesthood  inasmucli  as  he  had  a  virgin 
soul  fit  to  enter  the  golden  gates  of  God's  sanctuary,  un- 
sullied by  the  slightest  touch  of  anything  approaching 
sin.  At  twenty-five  he  was  ordained  priest,  and  then 
there  remained  but  one  test  through  which  Almighty  God 
must  put  him  and  try  him  before  he  crowned  him  with  the 
crown  of  the  most  heroic  charity  by  which  he  rose  as  a 
giant  in  the  annals  of  the  Church.  This  was  the  test  of 
affliction,  misery,  suffering,  and  trial.  The  sign  of  the 
cross  had  not  yet  been  burned  into  his  heart  by  suffering, 
and  this  was  the  last  crowning  test  to  which  our  Lord  put 
him. 

Consider  the  capture  of  the  young  priest  in  the  Medi- 
terranean by  Saracen  pirates,  and  his  sufferings  as  a  galley- 
slave,  and  afterwards  under  cruel  masters  in  Africa,  untU 
he  sang  his  own  misery  in  the  "Psalms  of  David"  and 
the  praises  of  the  Virgin  in  the  "Salve  Regina,"  which, 
heard  by  his  master's  wife  and  described  by  her,  caused 
the  husband's  conversion  and  the  release  of  the  saint, 
who,  by  a  miraculous  intervention  of  God,  escaped  to 
France.  Now  he  was  a  priest  once  more  in  his  own  land  ; 
God  had  tried  him  sufficiently,  and  the  sign  of  tlie  cross 
of  his  Redeemer  was  now  on  his  heart  and  soul.  He 
springs  at  once  into  an  atmosphere  of  higher  sanctity,  and 
that  sanctity  took  a  treble  form,  and  that  was  the  threefold 
form  in  which  it  flamed  in  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus— a 


St.  Vincent  de  Paul.  163 

trinity  of  love  in  the  heart  of  the  Master,  and  a  trinity  of 
love  in  the  heart  of  His  child — and  in  everything  he  proved 
himself  a  man  after  God's  own  heart.  Take  the  three 
master  loves  of  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus — love  for  God 
the  Eternal  Father,  love  for  God's  poor  in  every  form 
of  misery  and  distress,  and  finally,  love  for  God's  holy 
Church.  (He  eloquently  reviewed  the  life  of  our  Divine 
Lord,  to  show  how  particularly  he  brought  into  practice 
this  threefold  love.) 

Vincent,  chastened,  purified,  and  sanctified  by  every 
element  of  sanctity,  entered  on  his  great  career  of  charity, 
and  from  him  came  the  evidences  of  the  love  that  filled  the 
heart  of  his  Divine  Master.  Intercourse  with  God  became 
his  very  life,  at  all  times  and  under  all  circumstances. 
Even  when  the  agonies  of  death  were  on  him,  when  eighty- 
five  years  of  age,  the  pains  of  death,  the  failing  of  a  long 
and  laborious  life,  and  the  sorrow  of  separation  from  all 
he  loved  in  this  world  were  on  him,  with  trembling  limbs, 
with  a  breaking  heart,  even  then  he  rose  in  the  morning  at 
four  o'clock,  and  for  three  long  hours  he  prayed  motion- 
less, as  if  he  were  dead,  while  e^ery  fibre  of  his  aged  frame 
was  trembling  with  the  agony  of  death ;  still  he  mastered 
it  and  prayed  to  God. 

N'ext  to  this  was  his  manifold  love  for  the  poor.  Every 
misery  that  ever  came  across  him  was  relieved  ;  every  sor- 
row that  he  ever  met  was  changed  to  joy  ;  every  soul  that 
ever  came  within  the  touch  of  his  hand,  the  sound  of  his 
voice,  or  the  glance  of  his  eye  was  purified  by  him. 

There  is  not  in  the  roll  of  saints  who  adorn  the  annals 
of  the  Catholic  Church  one  whose  charity  went  forth  so 
powerfully,  so  wonderfully,  so  universally,  whose  charity 
so  embraced  in  distinct  action  every  single  corporal  and 
spuitual  work  of  mercy,  as  the  great  St.  Vincent  de  Paul. 
In  his  day  society  was  in  a  deplorable  state.  Little  chil- 
dren used  to  be  abandoned  in  the  streets  of  the  cities  by 
their  unnatural  and  wicked  mothers,  to  die  of  want  and 
hunger.  St.  Vincent  de  Paul  went  out  into  the  streets  of 
the  city  and  found  them,  took  those  precious  creatures  by 


^ 


164  St.  Tincent  de  Paul. 

the  hand,  and  founded  large  institutions,  hospitals,  asy- 
lums, and  refuges  for  foundling  children.  St.  Vincent  de 
Paul  stood  by  the  newly-formed  grave  where  the  father 
and  mother  were  laid  down  to  rest,  the  grave  surrounded 
by  the  trembling,  weeping,  hopeless,  defenceless,  and  aban- 
doned orphan  children,  and  he  was  a  father  to  them  all ; 
he  took  them  all  to  his  noble  heart,  and  founded  his  great 
asylums  and  institutions  for  orphans. 

St.  Vincent  de  Paul  spent  long  days,  from  morning 
watch  until  night,  among  the  poorest  of  the  poor  in  city 
and  in  country,  teaching  and  purifying.  Wherever  he  ap- 
peared the  light  of  knowledge  went  forth  from  him,  and 
the  truth  of  God  sprang  up  in  his  presence.  St.  Vincent 
found  the  fallen  and  degraded  sinner  the  most  hopeless  of 
all.  The  most  hopeless  of  all  it  seemed  indeed,  for  when 
Jesus  passed  away  it  seemed  as  if  He  had  forgotten  to 
make  provision  for  the  sisters  in  crime  of  the  woman  who 
crept  to  His  feet.  There  was  no  provision  made  for  the 
abandoned.  But  St.  Vincent  was  a  father  to  them  ;  he 
founded  Magdalene  asylums  wherever  he  went.  The 
fever- stricken,  the  paralyzed,  the  leper,  all  found  in  him 
not  merely  one  helping  in  an  isolated  case,  but  a  great 
organizing  charity  that  was  able  to  take  in  hand  aU  their 
wants  like  our  Divine  Lord.  A  great  war  broke  out  in 
the  province  of  Lorraine,  a  war  followed  by  the  usual 
curses  that  come  in  the  train  of  war  and  the  most  terrible 
pestilences.  The  history  of  the  famine  found  no  equal  in 
the  history  of  the  world  until  we  come  to  recollect  the 
famine  that  fell  on  dear  old  Ireland  not  many  years  ago. 
St.  Vincent  was  then  a  poor  man,  for  everything  that  was 
given  to  him  was  exhausted  in  charity ;  but  yet  he  went 
amongst  the  famine  and  pestilence  stricken  people,  and 
during  his  ministrations  he  spent  two  million  livres,  an 
extraordinary  sum  in  those  days.  He  made  provision  for 
the  galley-slaves  by  establishing  a  hospital  in  Marseilles, 
so  that  the  castaways  of  the  world  found  a  supporter  in 
him. 

This  was  his  life  for  sixty  years,  during  which  he  toiled 


St.  Vincent  de  Paul.  165 

night  and  day  ;  and  every  year  he  brought  forth  some  new 
evidence  of  his  great  energy  and  the  power  of  charity  that 
was  in  his  heart  and  hand.  But  there  was  another  love 
which  had  taken  possession  of  him,  and  that  was  the  love 
for  the  Church,  the  Spouse  of  Jesus.  That  Church  in  the 
days  of  St.  Vincent  was  threatened  by  one  great  danger — 
the  Jansenist  heresy  in  France,  a  heresy  that  under  the 
pretence  of  sanctity  would  break  down  Christian  law  and 
destroy  the  purity  and  virtue  of  Christian  teaching. 
Against  that  heresy  St.  Vincent  rose  up,  and  by  sanctity 
outshone  the  pretended  sanctity  of  Port  Royal  and  other 
centres  of  heresy  ;  he  cast  their  light  into  darkness,  and  in 
his  own  life  and  teaching  he  showed  fully  and  completely 
the  difference  between  the  real  idea  of  sanctity  that  came 
from  heaven  and  the  spurious  imitation  that  came  forth 
from  the  hypocrisy  of  man. 

There  was  another  danger  which  in  those  days  was  very- 
great,  and  that  was  that  the  Church  found  it  difficult  to 
provide  herself  with  holy  and  devout  clergy :  and  to  this 
Vincent  turned  himself  with  all  the  energy  his  great  cha- 
rity was  capable  of.  Everywhere  he  provided  for  the  pre- 
paration of  the  clergy  who  were  to  minister  at  our  altars. 
At  the  request  of  St,  Francis  de  Sales  he  took  charge  of  the 
Visitation  Order  of  Nuns,  and  the  testimony  of  St,  Francis 
was :  "I  have  seen  many,  and  heard  of  many,  but  I  have 
never  seen  or  heard  of  a  holier  or  worthier  priest  than 
Vincent  de  Paul."  Thus  did  his  heart  throb  with  the 
three  loves  of  Jesus.  But  a  man  may  have  all  these  cha- 
racteristics, and  may  do  all  these  things,  and  in  this  way 
receive  a  great  crown  in  heaven,  but  yet  his  work  may  die 
after  him,  and  have  no  permanency.  Not  so  with  this 
saint.  With  him  the  promise  that  was  made  of  the  apos- 
tles was  continued  :  "These  words  I  have  put  on  thy  lips, 
and  the  words  of  the  Lord  shall  not  depart  from  thy  lips 
nor  from  the  lips  of  thy  children  after  thee."  The  perma- 
nency of  the  work  was  the  great  feature  of  the  labors  of 
Vincent  de  Paul.  Revolutions  that  had  uprooted  every- 
thing had  swept  over  his  work,  as  well  as  the  works  of 


166  St.  Vincent  be  Paul. 

other  men  ;  wars  and  pestilences,  and  heresies  and  infideli- 
ties, rapine  and  cruelty,  and  slaughter  universal  had  come 
and  gone,  and  yet  through  all  this  did  the  work  of  St. 
Vincent  de  Paul  go  on ;  not  a  single  work  which  he  raised 
with  his  munificent  hand  was  destroyed,  for  they  are  all 
flourishing  to-day.  The  nuns  whom  he  founded,  his  spi- 
ritual daughters,  and  of  whom  he  said  when  it  was  ob- 
jected that  he  did  not  give  them  a  veil  to  cover  their  faces : 
"Their  modesty  shall  be  their  veil " — they  had  multiplied 
all  over  the  earth.  Wherever  the  Catholic  priest,  in  the 
most  distant  or  barbarous  regions,  had  to  face  the  dangers, 
miseries,  privations,  which  only  a  man  could  be  supposed 
to  face,  the  Catholic  priest  had  in  all  those  difficulties  the 
Sister  of  St.  Vincent  de  Paul  with  him,  suffering  with  him, 
laboring  with  him,  going  through  such  trials  as  no  other 
woman  on  the  face  of  the  earth  would  think  of  enduring. 
But  they  dared  all.  The  angel  of  death  might  stand  at  the 
pest-house,  and  every  human  being  might  withdraw  in 
terror  from  him,  but  the  Sister  of  Charity  swept  by  him 
and  went  in,  if  need  be,  to  suffer  and  to  die.  The  armies 
engaged  all  day  in  battle  might  withdraw  in  the  evening, 
yet  angry  shots  were  fired,  and  death  was  in  the  air ;  the 
angel  of  death  was  yet  at  his  work ;  the  missiles  were 
sweeping  over  the  well-fought  field ;  even  the  stoutest 
soldier  might  retire  to  shelter  in  that  reign  of  death ;  yet  in 
the  midst  of  that  destruction  the  Sister  of  St.  Vincent  de 
Paul  appeared,  bound  up  the  wounds  of  the  wounded  and 
consoled  the  dying  soldier.  She  knew  no  fear,  no  diflB- 
culty;  she  knew  no  thought  of  danger;  she  laiew  no 
worldly  shame.  In  the  midst  of  the  wildest  society  she 
received  the  same  tribute  of  respec^t  from  Christian,  infidel, 
and  Turk  ;  everywhere  her  modesty  was  her  veil.  Thus 
St.  Vincent  put  the  sign  of  stability  on  his  own  great  work, 
and  had  the  three  great  principles  he  had  spoken  of  before 
him  when  he  founded  his  great  order. 

Ireland,  in  his  day,  was  not  forgotten  by  him.  Ireland 
in  the  days  of  Vincent  was  making  her  great  effort  in 
defence  of  religion.     The  Confederation  of  Kilkenny  was 


St.  Vincent  de  Paul.  167 

formed ;  Catholic  armies  led  by  Catholic  generals  took 
their  place  on  Irish  battle-fields.  The  terrible  sword  of 
Cromwell  decimated  them.  All  was  death,  destruction, 
confiscation,  and  misery,  and  it  seemed  as  if  Ireland  was 
doomed  to  die.  It  was  then,  in  the  saddest  epoch  of  her 
history,  that  Vincent  sent  some  of  his  first  and  most  holy 
children  to  Ireland.  "  Go,"  he  said,  "and  help  to  keep  the 
sacred  lamp  still  burning  in  that  land  of  faith ;  go,  and,  if 
necessary,  add  your  blood  to  the  blood  so  gloriously  shed 
by  that  heroic  people."  They  came,  and  were  angels  of 
consolation  and  light  to  us,  and  their  care  over  us  has 
never  failed ;  for  through  every  corner  of  the  land  their 
voices  have  been  heard  resounding  the  praises  of  Jesus  and 
Mary,  and  implanting  in  the  heart  of  Ireland  more  deeply 
those  divine  principles  of  grace  with  which  Almighty  God 
had  so  richly  endowed  it.  Well  do  I  remember  when 
famine  passed  over  that  land,  when  desolation  and  misery 
were  everywhere,  and  Protestantism  made  its  last  despe- 
rate effort  to  enable  the  dark  angel  of  heresy  to  enter 
through  the  same  gate  that  let  in  the  angel  of  God's  wither- 
ing anger — the  angel  of  famine  ;  when  they  came  with  their 
gifts  and  offered  the  meats  of  heresy  to  a  dying,  a  heart- 
broken, and  famishing  people ;  and  when  that  faith  was 
imperilled,  and  when  it  seemed  as  if  the  strain  put  upon  it 
was  more  than  it  could  bear,  when  many  had  fallen  shame- 
fully, and  it  seemed  as  if  Ireland  was  about  to  lose  her 
last  and  only  remaining  treasure — well  do  I  remember  the 
Vincentian  Fathers  coming  down  to  that  western  land,  and 
with  powerful  words,  and  with  holy  sacramental  action, 
and  with  self-sacrificing  labor,  almost  superhuman,  stand- 
ing there  and  guarding  that  faith,  bringing  back  the  fallen, 
raising  the  renegade  from  degradation,  confuting  the  ad- 
versary, and  putting  to  flight  for  ever  the  agents  of  heresy 
that  had  dared  to  invade  this  land  for  the  corruption  of  our 
children.  Even  in  our  own  province  God  has  chosen  a 
Sister  of  St.  Vincent  de  Paul  to  offer  her  virgin  self  in 
martyrdom.  There  is  one  Sister  of  Charity  in  heaven  a 
martyr,  crowned  with  a  martyr's  diadem.    And,  oh!  she 


168  St.  Vincent  de  Paul. 

must  look  down  surely  on  tMs  fair  church  and  you  assem- 
bled here,  for  it  is  her  brother  who  is  saying  the  Mass. 
Blessed  be  the  Lord !  O  Lord !  accept  whatever  feeble 
voice  of  praise  we  can  send  Thee  to-day.  Thou  art  wonder- 
ful in  Thy  saints !  Thou  didst  find  in  Vincent  a  man  ac- 
cording to  Thy  own  heart,  and  with  Thy  holy  oil  Thou 
didst  graciously  anoint  him.  We  are  praising  him  now 
whilst  the  angels  around  Thy  throne  are  praising  him  also. 
O  Lord  !  accept  our  praise,  unworthy  though  it  be,  to  swell 
the  chorus  of  joy  which  shall  ring  through  the  vaults  of 
heaven  for  ever  and  ever. 


St.  Catherine  of  Sienna. 


Is  the  following  panegyric  of  St.  Catherine  of  Sienna  Father  Burke  has 
shown  how  a  little  child  rose  from  a  humble  sphere  in  life  to  become  a 
great  saint.  Nothing  is  more  beautiful  than  the  life  of  St.  Catherine, 
and  the  reading  of  it,  as  portrayed  by  the  matchless  style  of  Father 
Burke,  will  produce  both  profit  and  pleasure. 

AMONGST  the  many  proofs  that  Almighty  God  gave  of 
the  divine  origin  and  life  of  the  Church  there  was 
one  that  had  at  all  times  been  put  before  the  eyes  of  man, 
and  never  more  clearly  than  in  our  own  day.  The  Church 
of  God  had  always  been  persecuted,  and  although  we 
might  not  be  able  to  fathom  the  depths  of  the  great  Re- 
deemer's reason  for  permitting  His  Church  to  be  perse- 
cuted, it  would  appear  that  it  was  necessary  in  order  to 
prove  the  faith  and  test  the  love  of  his  children  on  earth. 
They  should,  however,  remember  that  when  the  Church  was 
apparently  crushed  under  the  strong  hand  of  the  world's 
persecutions,  by  enemies  without  in  serried  array  and  her 
traitorous  children  and  false  friends  within,  God  showed 
that  she  was  based  on  a  rock  which  could  never  be  moved 
by  any  tempest  that  might  assail  her.  Then  it  was  that 
He  showed  He  loved  the  mother  Church  the  more  be- 
cause she  was  smitten  by  the  hand  of  persecution  and 
trodden  down.  Nor  were  any  of  the  dark  hours  of  the 
Church  without  consolation,  for  God  said  His  Church 
should  remain  for  ever.  Even  history  gave  consolation  in 
its  records  of  many  epochs,  and  what  greater  could  there 
be  than  that  derived  from  a  careful  and  loving  study  of 
the  life  and  characters  of  the  saints  of  God  i 

160 


170  St.   Catherine  of  Sienna, 

In  every  land  in  tlie  world,  wliich  knew  no  accord  on 
any  other  question,  there  was  a  strong  and  an  infernal 
unity  in  the  persecution  of  the  Church,  and  in  this  day 
there  was  a  great  effort  being  made  to  destroy  the  Church. 
Her  principles  of  faith  were  repudiated,  denied,  disputed, 
and  contradicted  ;  the  very  principles  on  which  the  exist- 
ence of  Christianity  depended  were  assailed  on  all  hands, 
and  those  who  assailed  the  Church  were  held  up  to  the 
world  as  men  of  refined  minds  and  of  independent  charac- 
ter, to  whose  tender  mercies  we  were  called  upon  to  hand 
over  the  education  of  our  children,  so  that  they  might  ex- 
clude God  from  their  teachings  nntil  they  effaced  His  ex- 
istence from  the  minds  of  children  who  had  the  misfor- 
tune to  fall  under  their  upas  influence. 

They  persecuted  the  heads  of  the  Church  ;  the  holy 
virgins  consecrated  to  God  were  dragged  from  their  clois- 
ters, deprived  of  their  means  of  subsistence  on  earth,  and 
cast  upon  the  world  as  waifs,  with  calumny  heaped  on 
them  so  that  they  might  be  shunned  by  all  whom  they 
met,  all  because  they  were  consecrated  to  God.  So  did 
the  world ;  and  people  who  wished  the  destruction  of  the 
Church  turned  with  a  half -pitying  expression  and  said 
that  her  sufferings  were  very  great,  and  they  were  sorry 
her  end  had  come.  Such  people  were  to  be  pitied  for 
their  ignorance,  for  to  his  children  on  earth  God  always 
held  up  the  consolation  of  their  faith,  and  a  glorious 
epoch  in  the  Church's  history  was  exemplified  in  the  life 
of  our  saint.  They  should  go  back  five  hundred  years  for 
the  name  of  one  of  the  saints  whose  memory  was  enshrined 
in  the  heart  of  the  Church,  whose  name  rang  through  the 
vaults  of  heaven — St.  Catherine  of  Sienna. 

Five  hundred  years  was  not  a  long  time  to  go  back 
when  they  remembered  that  the  world  was  about  six 
thousand  years  old,  and  the  Church  existed  from  the  be- 
ginning of  all  time.  Five  hundred  years  ago  the  world 
was  pretty  much  in  the  state  in  which  we  behold  it  to-day. 
Rome,  rebellious  and  ungrateful,  had  so  worried  the  sove- 
reign pontiff  that  he  was  obliged  to  quit  it  in  1308  for 


St.  Catherine  of  Sienna.  171 

Avignon,  in  France,  where  he  lived  seven  years.  When 
the  pope  withdrew  from  Rome  poverty  and  famine  and 
pestilence  set  in,  and  dissension  became  rife.  Italy  was 
convulsed  with  dissension  and  disorder,  and,  owing  to  the 
ravages  of  the  pestilence,  grass  was  growing  in  the  streets 
of  Rome ;  for  the  pestilence  had  swept  away  eighty  thou- 
sand people.  Contention  and  strife  reigned  supreme. 
Was  that  to  continue?  No  ;  for  a  great  and  wonderful 
destiny  was  reserved  for  that  land,  the  fruitful  mother  of 
saints,  blessed  with  the  greatest  gifts  of  Heaven.  Even  the 
very  house  in  which  the  Mother  of  God  beheld  the  Word 
made  man  was  by  angelic  influence  transferred  to  the 
olive-crowned  hill  by  the  Adriatic  wave  in  Loretto,  in 
Italy.  In  the  midst  of  pestilence  and  plague,  of  dissen- 
sion and  bloodshed,  a  little  child  was  born  to  poor  parents 
in  1347,  in  the  city  of  Sienna,  in  Tuscany  ;  she  was  one  of 
twenty-five  brothers  and  sisters.  The  child  was  called 
Catherine,  after  a  saint  of  the  same  name  who  had  re- 
flected glory  on  the  Church  of  Alexandria.  Amongst  so 
many  brothers  and  sisters  the  child  grew  up  almost  unno- 
ticed. Though  the  fear  and  love  of  God  was  inculcated 
into  the  hearts  of  the  children  in  those  days,  the  world's 
learning  was  not  so  general,  and  Catherine  was  not  taught 
either  to  read  or  write.  She  was  taught,  however,  the 
Christian  doctrine,  and  was  told  that  the  love  of  Jesus 
Christ  and  his  Divine  Mother  were  to  be  objects  of  her 
greatest  care  in  life.  As  soon  as  she  heard  the  names  of 
Jesus  and  Mary,  even  before  her  mind  had  learned  to  ap- 
prehend truth  as  it  was  in  itself  and  for  its  own  sake,  her 
heart  brightened  with  Joy.  She  grew  up  comparatively 
unnoticed  until  she  got  to  her  seventh  year,  and  thongh 
she  was  not  what  the  world  would  call  beautiful  there 
came  over  her  at  that  age  some  power  which  captivated  all 
hearts — a  kind  of  mystic  light  of  loveliness  and  divine 
grace.  She  cast  away  every  thought  but  one,  her  heart 
was  so  full  of  love  for  Jesus  Christ.  St.  Thomas,  the 
great  theologian  of  the  Church,  had  written  that  when  a 
Boul  comes  to  reason  it  must  act  and  decide  for  God,  not 


173  St.  Catherine  of  Sienna. 

for  sin.  In  her  seventh  year  Catherine  made  an  act  of 
love  which  she  embodied  in  a  solemn  vow,  by  which  she 
consecrated  her  soul  and  body  in  virginity  to  God.  It 
might  be  said  that  the  heart  thus  consecrated  was  but  the 
heart  of  a  child,  but  surely  God  would  communicate  to 
infants  light  unknown  to  the  aged  and  learned.  Did  not 
the  unborn  Baptist  leap  in  his  mother's  womb  when  he 
felt  the  presence  of  Jesus  Christ?  Then  commenced  in 
Catherine's  life  an  abridgment  of  the  whole  perfection  in 
the  saints. 

Under  divine  love  we  should  first  mortify  and  purge 
ourselves  of  all  passions,  for  sin  must  not  exist  in  the  soul. 
The  purging  of  the  soul  from  sin  must  be  the  first  act  of 
divine  love  ;  that  must  be  preparatory  to  union  with  Jesus 
Christ,  for  divine  grace  and  wisdom  would  not  dwell  in 
bodies  given  to  sin.  When  the  soul  is  pure,  then  may  we 
look  for  extraordinary  manifestations  of  divine  love  ;  and 
just  as  the  human  love  is  strong  in  absorbing  the  mind  and 
in  vigorously  picturing  the  object  of  the  affections  in  a 
thousand  ways,  so  the  love  of  God  places  Him  for  ever 
before  the  eyes  and  souls  of  those  who  love  Him,  making 
them  forgetful  of  everything  else,  and  giving  the  soul 
strength  more  powerful  than  death  to  do  things  for  God 
with  all  the  strength  and  passion  of  love. 

The  third  manifestation  of  divine  love  was  the  zeal  it 
brought  to  the  soul  endowed  with  it.  The  soul  of  one  en- 
dowed with  such  love  bums  like  a  furnace,  that  it  may 
impart  its  flames  to  aU  around  it ;  it  possesses  a  zeal  which 
stops  at  nothing ;  and  into  this  state  did  Catherine  enter  in 
her  seventh  year,  when,  in  order  that  her  body  might  be 
no  hindrance  to  her  loving  soul,  she  began  to  fast  and  mor- 
tify herself  in  a  manner  the  most  astounding,  giving  up 
flesh-meat  and  wine,  and  limiting  herself  to  such  a  point 
that  how  she  lived  became  an  object  of  wonder  to  those 
around  her.  She  spent  the  night  in  prayer,  and  while  all 
the  other  members  of  the  family  slept  she  was  awake, 
praying  to  God.  She  at  length  brought  her  vigils  to  such 
a  point  that  out  of  twenty-four  hours  she  only  gave  half 


St.  Catherine  of  Sienna.  173 

an  hour  to  sleep,  and  even  then  she  only  laid  her  head  on 
a  stone,  or  on  a  hard  board  that  served  for  her  couch. 
One  trial  was  wanted  in  order  to  perfect  her.  The  hunger, 
and  thirst,  and  mortification  were  self-imposed  and  volun- 
tary, but  domestic  aflliction  surrounded  her.  Her  father 
and  mother  and  sisters,  not  knowing  what  kept  her  apart 
from  the  rest,  commenced  a  system  of  petty  annoyances, 
and  a  storm  of  domestic  persecution  surrounded  her. 
Every  one  she  met  from  morning  to  night  chided  her, 
and  she  only  received  from  them  harsh  words  and  actions. 
She  was  denied  a  little  room  for  herself,  and  she  was  pro- 
hibited from  going  to  church  to  receive  the  sacraments, 
and  it  was  then  that  she  built  up  a  Uttle  temple  in  lier  own 
heart,  and  in  it  she  worshipped  God. 

In  her  thirteenth  year  the  father,  a  hard  yet  a  just 
man,  learning  that  she  had  devoted  herself  to  God,  said 
that  he  should  not  attempt  to  contradict  her  will,  and  he 
gave  her  his  blessing.  Soon  after  she  beheld  St.  Dominic 
coming  down  in  a  vision,  and  he  told  her  to  enter  his 
order.  Now  there  was  no  impediment  in  her  way,  and  the 
next  few  years  that  intervened  she  manifested  the  most 
powerful  divine  grace  and  fidelity.  Her  prayers  became 
continual,  and  every  night  she  scourged  herself  mercilessly 
until  the  blood  flowed  from  her  body.  She  visited  the 
lowly  sick  in  their  houses,  in  hospitals,  and  in  jails,  and 
her  life  before  it  became  public  was  one  manifestation  of 
miraculous  grace.  On  one  occasion,  before  she  entered 
the  order  of  St.  Dominic,  she  attended  a  woman  the  ulcers 
on  whose  body  were  of  the  most  sickening  and  revolting 
nature,  calculated  to  disgust  and  sicken  any  one.  Cathe- 
rine felt  a  sickening  sensation  on  seeing  the  loathsome 
ulcers,  and  she  was  strongly  tempted  to  turn  away  in  dis- 
gust. But  she  felt  that  the  temptation  came  from  the  devil, 
and  she  prayed  that  she  might  be  able  to  resist  it.  On 
arising  from  her  knees  she  went  and  put  her  lips  to  the 
loathsome  ulcers,  and  felt  in  doing  so  as  if  her  very  soul 
would  die  within  her  with  sheer  disgust.  She  again  went 
to  pray,  and  while  kneeling  down  our  beautiful  Saviour 


174'  8t.  Catherine  of  Sienna. 

came  down  from  heaven  on  the  wings  of  His  love,  and, 
drawing  His  robe  aside,  showed  her  a  bleeding  wound  in 
His  side ;  and  then  for  the  kiss  she  gave  tlie  revolting 
ulcer  she  was  permitted  to  approach  and  put  her  lips  to 
the  bleeding  wound  of  Jesus  Christ. 

Though  she  was  a  virgin  of  great  modesty,  she  almost 
forgot  the  weakness  of  her  sex,  for  actually  when  the  peo- 
ple were  horrified  by  the  blasphemy  of  one  or  two  mur- 
derers who  were  in  jail  awaiting  execution,  she  said.  Why 
should  they  perish  in  sin ;  and  she  went  into  the  cell  where 
they  were  in  heavy  chains,  and,  throwing  herself  on  her 
knees  before  those  frightful  criminals,  she  began  to  tell 
them  how  beautiful  Jesus  Christ  was,  and  how  they  would 
love  Him  if  they  only  knew  Him.  They  were  at  first 
astonished,  but  their  feelings  changed  soon  to  repentance, 
and  ultimately  they  knelt  down  to  pray  with  her  and  ask 
forgiveness  of  the  Lord,  and  the  tears  which  they  dropped 
in  her  hands  she  flung  up  to  heaven  in  an  excess  of  joy. 
She  soon  became  an  object  of  wonder  and  venemtion.  On 
one  occasion,  when  a  young  nobleman  was  sentenced  to 
execution  for  a  political  offence,  his  noble  heart  revolted 
at  so  ignominious  a  death  and  at  so  unjust  a  sentence,  and 
he  went  forth  blaspheming  God  and  man  ;  but  Catherine, 
hearing  him,  came  out  of  a  house  and  spoke  to  him  of  the 
higher  love  of  God,  and  entreated  and  counselled  him, 
until  at  last  he  consented  to  receive  a  priest  and  forgive 
all,  on  condition  that  she  should  stand  beside  him  on  the 
scaffold  and  hold  him  in  her  hands  while  the  hand  of  jus- 
tice severed  his  head  from  his  body.  He  mounted  the 
scaffold,  and  before  him  stood  the  executioner  with  his 
bright  axe  upraised.  And  Catherine,  who  was  there,  said : 
"  0  Christ !  love,  fire,  and  flame  of  my  heart,  if  that  axe 
only  could  fall  on  me  that  I  mi^ht  fly  to  you." 

The  young  man  was  struck  with  the  words,  and  he  died 
repeating  the  names  of  Jesus  and  Mary  and  Catherine, 
whilst  she  kept  whispering  hope  into  his  ear  ;  and  as  his 
life-blood  oozed  out  and  saturated  her  garments  she  saw 
his  soul  ascending  into  heaven  crowned  with  the  crown  of 


St.  Catherine  of  Sienna.  %      175 

forgiveness  and  divine  love.  Yet  the  moment  came  wlien 
she  was  to  write  her  name  in  history  and  be  a  saint  in  the 
Church.  Italy  was  ruined.  Rome  was  desolate,  the  curse 
of  immorality  was  on  the  people,  and  a  league  was  made  to 
get  rid  of  tiie  pope  and  to  prepare  the  way  to  get  rid  of  his 
spiritual  and  temporal  authority. 

It  was  a  terrible  moment,  when  the  crown  of  Italy's  fate 
was  tottering  on  her  brows,  but  there  were  some  found  who 
thought  that  before  they  drew  the  sword  they  would  try 
negotiations  with  the  sovereign  pontiff,  and  Catherine  was 
sent  from  Florence  to  try  and  induce  him  to  come  back  to 
Italy.  Slie  presented  herself  to  Gregory  XI.,  and  said : 
*' My  sweet  father,  I  kneel  at  thy  feet  and  ask  a  blessing 
and  your  return  to  Italy."  And  he  said :  "  Arise,  O  daugh- 
ter I  go  back  to  Italy  ;  make  what  bargain  with  the  people 
you  can.  I  will  leave  the  Church  in  your  hands,  only 
save  the  Church  from  dishonor,"  Never  since  the  Virgin 
Mary  beheld  the  Word  made  man  did  saint  occupy  such  a 
grand  position  on  earth — the  destinies  of  the  Church  in  one 
hand  and  the  fortunes  of  her  native  land  in  the  other.  She 
went  back,  and  when  she  entered  Florence  she  saw  blood 
flowing  on  every  side.  She  pleaded  the  cause  of  the  Church 
in  their  midst.  At  the  sound  of  her  voice  the  angry  waters 
of  passion  and  pride  and  revenge  were  calmed  within  the 
souls  of  men,  and  a  Pentecost  of  divine  love  and  peace  feU 
on  them,  and  they  made  peace  with  the  Church. 

She  went  back  to  Avignon  and  she  asked  the  sovereign 
pontiff  to  come  back  to  Rome,  even  though,  as  she  said, 
"you  made  a  vow  not  to  return."  He  was  amazed,  for 
though  he  had  made  that  vow  no  one  on  earth  knew  of  it, 
and  he  asked  her  how  she  knew  he  had  made  such  a  vow, 
and  she  replied  that  God  had  informed  her  ;  and  she  said  : 
"Arise,  holy  father,  and  return"  ;  and  he  arose  in  won- 
der and  followed  her  to  the  City  of  the  Seven  Hills,  and  all 
Italy  was  appeased,  and  peace  and  grace  came  upon  the 
land.  In  1386  there  was  a  schism  within  the  Catholic 
world.  Clement  XI.  was  elected  pope  by  a  faction  ;  car- 
dinals, bishops,  and  priests  were  found  untrue,  and  inter- 
nal dissension  prevailed.    Urban  VI.»  the  legitimate  pontiff. 


176  St.  Catherine  of  Sienna. 

was  in  Rome,  and  Clement  was  at  Avignon  ;  the  world  was 
divided,  not  knowing  whom  to  obey,  though  knowing  that 
there  could  be  but  one  pope,  one  visible  head  of  the  Church 
on  earth.  A  voice  was  wanted  to  point  out  the  true  pon- 
tiff, a  saint  whose  sanctity  could  not  be  disputed,  Swe- 
den, Sicily,  England  (which  had  always  a  taste  for  schism), 
and  many  other  nations  of  Christendom  heard  Catherine's 
preaching  in  the  streets  and  the  highways,  and  she  pointed 
to  Urban  VI.  and  proclaimed  him  the  true  pope,  and  she 
proved  it  by  several  miracles. 

By  the  touch  of  her  hand  she  cured  the  sick,  and  on 
learning  that  her  mother  died  without  the  sacraments  she 
was  deeply  grieved,  and  hurried  to  her  house  in  Sienna, 
where  she  found  them  preparing  for  the  burial,  for  she  was 
dead  many  days.  She  stood  in  the  presence  of  the  multitude 
and  gave  herself  up  to  prayer  ;  she  put  forth  her  voice  like 
Him  who  spoke  over  the  tomb  of  Lazarus,  when  her  mo- 
ther' s  senses  awakened,  her  eyes  opened,  and  an  act  of  heart- 
felt sorrow  burst  forth  from  her  bosom.  She  was  restored 
to  life  and  a  long  time  was  granted  to  her  to  do  penance, 
and  the  people  heard  that  the  woman  who  proclaimed  the 
true  pontiff  in  Rome  was  the  author  of  this  miracle,  and 
the  whole  world  did  homage  to  Urban  VI.  She  was  now 
thirty-three  years  of  age,  and  it  was  fitting  that  the  fulness 
of  her  years  should  be  as  His  whom  she  loved  so  deeply 
and  served  so  faithfully.  She  laid  her  head  down,  and,  fa- 
tigued by  the  burden  of  tlie  great  mission  and  tlie  fulfil- 
ment of  all  the  divine  purposes  on  earth,  she  looked  up  to 
heaven,  and  in  a  spirit  of  prayer  her  heart  went  up  to  God. 
She  was  able  to  smile  at  all  the  forebodings  of  the  enemies 
of  the  Church  who  tried  to  put  down  the  pope.  Great  was 
her  life  and  great  and  lasting  her  services  to  the  Church  on 
earth,  a  fact  which  was  acknowledged  by  the  Pope  a  very 
few  years  ago,  when  he  placed  the  Church  of  God,  and 
especially  the  Eternal  City,  under  the  special  protection  of 
St.  Catherine  of  Sienna.  There,  amidst  the  seven  hills  of 
Rome,  she  lies  to-day,  and  when  the  trumpet  shall  sound 
for  the  disentombing  none  shall  arise  more  glorious  than 
Catherine  of  Sienna. 


St,  Columbkille. 


In  tliis  panegyric  of  St.  Columbkille  Father  Burke  has  given  a  unique  sketch 
of  the  life  of  the  great  saint.  It  does  not  claim  to  be  a  critical  disserta- 
tion on  the  truthfulness  of  the  wild  legends  that  Irish  writers  have 
handed  down  to  us,  putting  them  to  the  account  of  St.  Columbkille,  but 
it  is  a  most  entertaining  and  instructive  lecture. 

Y  FRIENDS :  There  are  two  tilings  necessary  in  order 
to  make  a  saint :  nature  and  grace  must  both  work 
out  the  character  of  the  man.  Those  whom  the  Almighty 
God  destines  for  the  high  sanctity  which  the  Catholic 
Church  recognizes  by  canonization  either  receive  from  God 
in  the  beginning  a  calm,  sweet,  gentle  nature ;  or  else,  if 
they  receive  from  God  a  hard,  vigorous,  obstinate  nature, 
they  receive,  on  the  other  hand,  copious  divine  graces 
whereby  they  overcome  this  nature  thoroughly  and  make 
themselves  after  God's  own  heart. 

But  whatever  man' s  natural  disposition  be,  whether  it 
be  the  amiable,  sweet,  gentle  disposition,  easily,  unsel- 
fishly yielding  to  others,  or  whether  full  of  character,  full 
of  self-assertion,  full  of  vigor,  full  of  obstinacy — whatever 
it  be,  if  that  man  is  destined  to  be  a  holy  man,  a  man  after 
God' s  own  heart  and  nature,  there  is  another  thing  that 
must  come  to  him  from  heaven  to  aid  the  natural  disposi- 
tion which  he  has  received,  and  that  is  the  mighty,  copious 
graces  of  the  Almighty  God  to  saiats  of  the  Catholic 
Church. 

The  saints  of  whom  we  read  were  men  like  ourselves. 
In  reading  their  lives  nothing  is  more  interesting  than  to 
trace  the  man  side  by  side  with  the  saint.    They  had  the 

177 


178  St.  ChLmiBKiLLE. 

same  passions,  they  had  the  same  difficulties  to  overcome 
that  we  have,  the  same  enemies  ;  the  world  lay  around 
them,  the  devil  was  beneath  them,  and  the  flesh  was  their 
very  selves.  But,  arming  for  this  contest,  whereby  they 
were  to  triumph,  not  only  over  the  world  around  them  and 
over  the  powers  of  hell  beneath  them,  but  over  their  own 
selves,  they  received  from  God  the  highest,  noblest,  and 
the  most  powerful  graces,  and  by  corresponding  with  these 
graces  they  elaborated  and  brought  forth  their  own  sanc- 
tity. 

Now,  what  follows  from  all  this  ?  My  dear  friends,  it 
follows  that  there  is  a  natural  and  a  supernatural  side 
even  in  the  lives  of  the  saints  ;  it  follows  that  we  find  the 
man  overcoming  himself,  sometimes  yielding  so  far  as  to 
bring  out  his  natural  character,  but  in  the  end  overcoming 
himself  by  divine  grace.  It  follows  that  the  lives  of  the 
saints  are  not  only  the  most  instructive  to  us  as  Catholics, 
but  that  they  are  also  most  instructive  to  the  historian  or 
to  the  antiquarian  as  subjects  of  natural  character.  Now, 
my  friends,  the  world  is  divided  into  various  nations  and 
races  of  people,  and  all  these  various  races  differ  from  one 
another  in  the  most  extraordinary  manner.  All  that  you 
have  to  do  is  to  travel  to  see  this.  I  have  travelled  a  great 
deal — all  over  the  Continent  of  Europe,  I  may  say,  with 
the  exception  of  Russia  and  Turkey — and  nothing  in  all 
these  countries  struck  me  more  than  the  difference  of  the 
various  races. 

For  instance,  I  travelled  in  France,  and  there  I  found  a 
lively,  passionate,  impulsive,  generous  people,  most  polite, 
most  willing  to  go  out  of  their  road  to  serve  you  in  any 
manner ;  entering  a  stage-coach  or  railway -car,  coming  in 
hat  in  hand,  with  a  "  May  I  be  permitted  to  speak  to  you, 
sir"  style;  making  themselves  agreeable  to  you  at  all 
times.  Passing  through  France  into  Germany,  there  I 
found  a  people  silent  and  reserved,  with  perhaps  more  of 
the  grandeur  of  manliness  than  in  France,  but  no  approach 
to  anything  like  conversation  ;  no  apparent  external  po- 
liteness, though  a  great  deal,  no  doubt,  of  true  politeness. 


St.   Columbkille.  179 

In  a  word,  as  different  from  all  the  neighboring  country  as 
night  from  day.  So,  in  like  manner,  go  to  Ireland  and 
travel.  Let  a  man  who  is  not  an  Irishman  go  there,  and 
he  finds  a  quiet,  bright,  intelligent,  generous,  and  impul- 
sive people.  If  he  makes  a  joke,  no  sooner  is  it  out  of  his 
lips  than  the  Irishman  laughs,  and  with  his  ready  laugh 
shows  that  he  appreciates  the  joke.  If  he  does  not  make 
a  joke,  the  simplest  Irish  peasant  that  he  meets  on  the  road 
will  make  one  for  him.  (Great  laughter.)  If  he  wants  a 
drink  of  water  and  asks  for  it,  the  probability  is  that  the 
farmer's  wife  will  say  to  him  :  "  Do  not  be  taking  water, 
it  is  bad  for  you.  Take  a  drink  of  milk."  (Renewed 
laughter.)  Impulsive,  speaking  without  thinking,  saying 
the  word  first  and  afterwards  thinldng  whether  it  was 
right  or  wrong  to  say  it,  perhaps  giving  you  a  blow  in  the 
face  and  afterwards  thinking  perhaps  you  did  not  de- 
serve it.  (Laughter.)  More  or  less  slipshod  and  impru- 
dent, allowing  everything  to  pass  off  easily.  Pass  over  to 
England  and  you  find  a  country  as  different  as  if  you  had 
passed  from  this  world  into  another  sphere.  Everything 
is  kept  in  its  own  place.  You  may  pass  through  the  land 
and  there  is  neither  welcome  nor  insult  for  you.  If  you 
ask  for  a  drink  of  water,  there  is  very  little  fear  that  you 
will  be  offered  a  drink  of  buttermilk.  So  throughout  all 
the  world  and  the  nations  of  the  earth,  each  one  has  its 
own  character.  Don't  imagine  that  I  am  abusing  the  Eng- 
lishman by  contrasting  him  uniformly  with  the  Irishman. 
My  friends,  I  am  one  of  your  race,  but  I  tell  you  that  the 
Englishman  has  qualities  that  are  admirable.  As  a  rule 
hQ  is  a  brave  man,  a  self-reliant  man,  a  truthful  man  ;  his 
word  is  his  bond.  Only  leaving  Ireland  out  of  the  ques- 
tion and  the  Catholic  religion,  argue  with  him  on  any 
point  and  you  will  find  him  a  fair  man  ;  but  the  moment 
you  talk  to  him  on  Catholicity  or  upon  Ireland  you  might 
as  well  be  talking  to  the  devil.  (Laughter.)  E"ow,  why 
am  I  making  these  remarks  ?  For  this  purpose  :  the  saints 
of  the  various  nations  share  in  the  national  character; 
they  are,  perhaps,  the  very  best  specimens  of  the  national 


180  St.  Columbkille. 

character  of  each  nation  and  people.  Of  whatever  nation 
the  saint  is,  you  are  sure  to  find  the  natural  side  of  his 
character,  with  this  difference,  there  you  find  the  grace  of 
the  Almighty  God  in  its  highest,  noblest,  and  strongest 
form  acting  upon  the  natural  character  of  the  man,  or,  if 
you  will,  upon  the  national  character  of  the  people  as  em- 
bodied in  that  man. 

I  have  come  here  this  evening  to  speak  to  you  of  one  of 
the  greatest  saints  in  the  Catholic  Church — a  man  whose 
name  is  recorded  in  the  annals  of  the  Church  amongst  her 
brightest  and  most  glorious  saints,  a  man  whose  name  is 
known  throughout  the  whole  world  wherever  a  Catholic 
priest  says  his  oflSlce  and  wherever  a  Catholic  people  hear 
the  voice  of  their  pastor.  There  are  many  saints  in  the 
Catholic  Church  of  whom  we  hear  but  little,  many  saints, 
heroic  Christian  men,  exalted  in  their  sanctity.  What  do 
you  know  about  them  ?  You  are  Catholics,  and  you  have 
scarcely  ever  heard  the  names  of  some  of  the  great  and 
illustrious  saints — of  St.  Louis  Bertrand,  a  Dominican 
saint  of  my  order,  one  of  the  greatest  evangelists  God 
ever  sent  forth  ;  of  St.  Hyacinthe.  But  there  were  names 
of  saints  who  were  so  great  that  the  whole  world  is  familiar 
with  them.  St.  Augustine,  we  have  all  heard  of  him  ;  St. 
Patrick,  who  has  the  most  ardent  devotion  of  the  Irish 
race,  his  name  is  known  to  the  whole  world,  and  will  be 
known  to  the  end  of  time.  Amongst  the  mighty  saints, 
amongst  the  saints  who  have  written  their  names  upon  the 
history  of  the  world,  amongst  those  saints  adopted  by 
nations  as  their  patrons,  whose  names  are  familiar  to  every 
hearth  in  the  lands  where  civilization  and  religion  have  ex- 
tended themselves,  is  the  name  of  the  Irish  Saint  Columb- 
kille, known  outside  of  Ireland  by  the  name  Columba,  but 
known  amongst  his  own  people  as  "Columbkille."  It  is 
of  him  I  have  come  to  speak.  Therefore  I  speak  of  the 
national  character  and  the  natural  side  of  the  saint  as  em- 
bodied in  him. 

You  all  know,  my  dear  friends,  that  it  is  now  fifteen 
hundred  years  since  St.  Patrick  preached  in  Ireland.    At 


St.  Columbkille.  181 

that  time  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  was  only  known  in 
Italy,  in  Spain,  in  portions  of  France,  and  througliout  the 
East  in  the  primeval  nations.  The  rest  of  Europe  was  in 
darkness.  As  yet  the  voice  of  the  apostolic  preacher  had 
not  been  heard.  The  forests  of  Germany  still  witnessed 
the  rites  and  ceremonies  of  the  ancient  pagans  in  that 
great  land.  The  northern  portions  of  Europe — Sweden, 
Norway,  and  Russia,  amid  their  snows — still  heard  the 
voice  of  the  ancient  skalds  celebrating  in  their  sagas  the 
pagan  divinities  of  the  olden  time.  England  was  in  the 
deepest  darkness  of  her  Saxon  idolatry.  A  few  of  the 
ancient  Britons  in  the  mountains  of  Wales  had  received 
the  Catholic  faith,  and  their  bishops  and  priests  were  un- 
generous enough  and  weak  enough  to  refuse  to  preach 
the  Gospel  to  the  Saxons  because  they  had  invaded  their 
land.  It  was  in  this  almost  universal  mist  and  darkness 
that,  in  the  year  442,  a  man  landed  on  the  shores  of  Ire- 
land and  lifted  up  his  voice  and  proclaimed  the  name  of 
Jesus  Christ  and  his  Virgin  Mother ;  and  the  Irish  race 
to-day  profess  the  Catholic  faith  in  all  the  clearness,  in  all 
the  exact  definiteness  of  its  knowledge,  and  profess  it 
still  more  in  the  sanctity  of  the  national  priesthood  and 
the  system  of  monasticism,  as  it  was  given  to  them  from 
the  lips  of  St.  Patrick.  My  dear  friends,  no  matter  what 
men  may  say,  I  am  here  as  a  Catholic,  as  an  Irish  priest, 
and  I  defy  any  man  in  the  world  to  produce  such  a  miracu- 
lous example  of  conversion  and  of  instant  maturity  into 
fulness  of  love  and  holiness  of  life  as  that  of  the  Irish 
race. 

Now,  since  St.  Patrick  passed  to  his  grave  more  than 
half  a  century  has  passed  by.  In  the  year  521  one  of  the 
princes  of  Ulster  had  a  son  born  to  him.  He  was  of  the 
royal  house  of  O'Neill  and  O'Donnell,  and  descended  from 
"  King  Niall  of  the  Nine  Hostages,"  the  man  who  was  sup- 
posed to  have  brought  St.  Patrick  as  a  captive  into  Ireland 
for  the  first  time.  This  house  of  O'Donnell  and  O'Neill  is 
so  ancient  that  its  origin  is  lost  in  the  mists  of  fable  in  the 
prehistoric  time  that  goes  before  any  written  record,  ex- 


182  St.  Columbkillb, 

cept  the  Holy  Scriptures.  There  were  kings  in  the  north- 
ern parts  of  Ireland  from  the  sixth  century.  St.  Patrick 
landed  in  Ireland  and  found  O'DonneU  and  O'Neill  on  the 
throne  of  Ireland.  In  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  only 
three  hundred  years  ago,  there  lived  an  Irish  prince  by 
the  name  of  O'Neill,  and  when  Elizabeth  wanted  to  make 
him  an  English  earl  he  answered  her:  "No  earls  for 
me ;  my  foot  is  on  my  native  heath,"  and  sent  her  back 
her  dignities  and  her  honors.  No  king  in  Europe  had  so 
grand,  so  royal  a  title  as  that  crown  of  the  O'NeiUs  of 
Ulster.    From  these  came  St.  Columbkille. 

The  name  he  received  was  not  in  baptism,  but  in  his  con- 
version. The  word  "Columba"  is  the  Latin  word  for  the 
"  dove"  ;  so  gentle,  so  tender,  so  patient  was  he  that  they 
called  him  the  "gentle  dove"  in  the  Irish  language.  They 
went  farther,  and  because  he  was  a  monk  who  loved  to 
read  in  his  cell,  who  loved  to  live  among  his  brethren  in 
their  cells,  they  called  him  Columbkille,  which  means  "  the 
dove  in  the  church,  or  in  the  celL"  Tradition  and  history 
tell  us  that  no  sooner  was  the  child  born  than  his  prince- 
father  called  in  the  priest  to  baptize  him.  No  delay,  not 
even  for  an  hour  ;  as  soon  as  the  infant  opened  his  eyes 
and  saw  the  light  of  heaven  the  divine  adoption  and  the 
light  of  supernatural  faith  was  let  in  upon  his  soul  by  the 
holy  waters  of  Baptism.  No  sooner  was  the  child  taken 
from  his  mother's  breast  than  he  was  handed  over  to  the 
care  of  the  priest  who  baptized  him,  the  father  and 
mother  saying  to  him :  "We  begot  this  child  as  a  child 
of  nature,  a  child  of  Adam  ;  as  he  is  ours,  he  came  into 
this  world  with  the  curse  of  God  upon  him  ;  but  thou,  O 
priest  of  God  !  thou  dost  lift  off  that  curse  and  dissipate  it 
by  Baptism.  He  is  more  your  child  than  ours ;  take  him, 
and  rear  him  up  for  that  God  whose  blessing,  whose  adop- 
tion thou  hast  brought  down  upon  him  in  Baptism.'*  So 
he  remained  with  the  priest  that  baptized  him. 

As  the  child  grew  two  things  grew  side  by  side,  one 
with  the  other.  The  first  one  belonged  to  the  Irish  character, 
and  was  as  Irish  as  it  could  be.    The  second  was  the  divine 


8t,  Columbkille.  ,     183 

grace  of  God,  wMch  was  the  most  wonderful.  "We  can 
scarcely  reconcile  the  two,  as  we  look  upon  that  beautiful 
young  figure  that  rises  up  before  us  on  the  pages  of  liis- 
tory,  as  we  contemplate  his  life.  He  grew  from  a  child  to 
a  boy,  from  a  boy  to  a  young  man.  He  was  the  most 
beautiful  youth  in  all  Ireland — tall  above  all  other  men, 
perfectly  formed,  with  the  lofty  forehead  of  the  king's 
son  ;  the  light  blue  eye,  full  of  genius,  but  full  of  temper ; 
the  strong  athletic  form,  delighting  in  coursing  in  the 
fields  in  the  manly  exercises  of  the  strong  young  man.  A 
beautiful  temperament,  full  of  imagination,  he  was  a 
lover  of  poetry  and  of  music,  and  his  young  hand  loved 
to  tune  the  chords  of  the  ancient  Irish  harp,  and  then  to 
draw  from  them,  with  thrilling  grasp,  the  very  spirit  and 
soul  of  Celtic  music. 

Full  of  talent  and  of  intellect,  with  Irish  brains  in  his 
head,  there  was  no  branch  of  knowledge  or  of  science  that 
was  unknown  to  him.  With  him  to  look  at  a  thing  was 
to  know  it ;  he  did  not  require  to  study  it.  But  he  was 
also  full  of  pride,  full  of  passion.  No  man  dared  to  con- 
tradict him  ;  his  temper  was  roused  in  a  moment,  and 
when  that  temper  was  roused  the  young  Irishman  did  not 
stop  to  think  of  what  he  said  or  what  he  did.  With  the 
word  came  the  blow,  and  then  the  apology  when  it  was  too 
late.  The  very  soul  of  the  saint,  when  he  loolied  at  any- 
thing, decided  whether  it  was  right  or  wron^.  Full  of 
Celtic  obstinacy,  full  of  pride,  side  by  side  with  a  heart 
as  soft  and  tender  as  that  of  a  youn^  woman,  if  he  saw  a 
poor  man  or  cripple  on  the  wayside  in  feverish  misery,  his 
heart  seemed  to  break  in  pity  for  him,  and,  if  no  one  was 
around  to  help,  he  would  take  him  up  on  his  shoulders 
and  carry  him  to  his  house,  and  there  feed  and  clothe  him. 
If,  when  carrying  a  poor  man  or  beggar,  any  one  on  the 
way  passed  by,  and  he  called  upon  that  person  to  help 
him  and  he  refused,  the  temper  came  up  at  once — "May 
the  God  of  heaven  smite  you  !"  He  always  left  a  curse 
on  them.     There  was  the  full  Celtic  blood. 

Koble,  gentle,  quick,  irascible  he  was,  full  of  character 


184  St.  Golumbkille. 

and  determination,  even  to  obstinacy.  This  was  the  na-' 
tural  character ;  yet,  strange  to  say,  side  by  side  with  this, 
and  whilst  thas  hindered  with  a  thousand  imperfections, 
there  was  the  most  wonderful  supernatural  reign  of  divine 
graces.  A  thorough  Celt,  a  thorough  Irishman,  his  angel 
guardian  appeared  to  him  when  he  was  between  twelve 
and  fourteen  years  of  age,  and  said  to  him :  "  Columba,  I 
come  from  heaven."  The  moment  Columba  saw  him,  in 
the  form  of  a  radiant  youth,  he  said  at  once :  "Are  all  the 
angels  in  heaven  as  fair  as  you  are  ? ' '  The  angel  answered  : 
*'  They  are  all  as  fair,  and  many  more  fair.  I  come  charg- 
ed by  the  Christ  whom  your  love  so  dearly  to  ask  you  what 
gifts  you  desire  from  God."  Instantly  the  Irish  youth, 
the  young  Irish  boy,  said  :  "I  ask  from  God  chastity  and 
wisdom."  The  moment  he  said  the  words  three  angels, 
in  the  form  of  three  beautiful  maidens,  appeared  before 
him.  One  of  the  fairest  of  all  then  threw  her  arms  around 
his  neck.  The  Irish  boy  drew  back  afraid.  "Thou  hast 
refused  my  embrace,  Columba ;  thou  knowest  not  me.  I 
am  the  angel  of  Divine  Virtue.  I  come  with  my  sisters  to 
remain  with  you  for  ever."  These  were  the  three  sisters — 
Divine  Virtue,  Divine  Wisdom,  and  Divine  Spirit  of 
Prophecy — wlio  came  to  the  child  as  a  boy,  a  boy  full  of 
faults,  full  of  the  imperfections  of  the  Celtic  character,  the 
same  imperfections  that  you  and  I  have  ;  not  sitting  down 
and  being  prudent  and  quiet,  but  always  loving  a  contest, 
always  loving  to  do  a  generous  thing,  and  to  do  it  on  the 
spur  of  the  moment ;  always  ready  to  turn  around  and 
take  up  a  slight  or  an  insult  before  it  is  offered.  (Laughr 
ter.)  Yet,  side  by  side,  we  have  the  evidence  in  the  life 
of  the  saint  of  the  other  portion  of  the  Celtic  character — 
the  virtue  of  purity. 

Thus  it  was  most  natural  that  Columba  became  a  monk 
and  was  an  obedient  priest.  He  gave  his  light  for  ever  to 
that  grand  Irish  monasticism  which  was  the  flower  and 
the  bloom  of  the  glory  of  Ireland  in  that  wonderful  sixth 
century.  The  Irish  monks  at  that  time  were  the  most 
learned  as  well  as  the  most  holy  men  in  the  Catholic 


St.  Columbkille.  185 

Church.  Everywhere  their  virtue  was  known,  in  every 
nation  professing  the  Catholic  faith.  Students  came  in 
profusion  to  Ireland.  Yea,  even  the  very  pagan  nations 
sent  their  children  to  Ireland  to  the  grand  university  of  the 
world,  there  to  learn  every  highest  science  and  art,  and 
above  all  the  art  and  glorious  science  of  loving  Jesus 
Christ  and  His  Church.  They  entered  the  mighty  schools 
of  Armagh,  the  island  of  Arran  on  the  western  coast,  and 
Lismore  on  the  banks  of  the  Blackwater  ;  in  a  word,  they 
entered  the  mighty  schools  that  covered  the  whole  face  of 
Ireland,  and  the  old  historians  tell  us  that  it  was  considered 
rather  a  poor  effort  where  there  was  not  at  least  three 
thousand  students.  The  old  Irish  saintly  monks  in  their 
history  tell  us  that  they  cultivated  every  highest  art,  and 
above  all  the  art  of  music.  In  the  ancient  life  of  St. 
Bridget  we  read  that  on  one  occasion  she  went  into  the 
king's  palace,  perhaps  at  Tara,  and  there  she  saw  a  harp 
hanging  up  on  the  wall.  Turning  to  the  white-haired  and 
gray-bearded  minstrel,  she  said  to  him  :  "  Harp  me  a  song 
on  thy  harp."  And  the  old  man  took  down  his  harp  lov- 
ingly, and,  seating  himself  while  the  young  Christian  vir- 
gin sat  before  him,  in  melody  he  poured  forth  the  glories 
of  God  and  the  glories  of  Ireland.  So  when  Columba 
entered  the  monastery  he  found  there  every  highest  art 
and  science  cultivated ;  but  he  found  there  two  great  pas- 
sions that  were  always  burning  in  the  heart  of  the  ancient 
Irish  monk,  and  these  were  an  overpowering  love  for  Ire- 
land and  a  love  for  Ireland' s  poetry  and  music.  The  young 
prince,  ardent,  full  of  courage,  who  seemed  to  be  marked 
out  far  more  for  a  soldier,  a  sailor,  or  a  captain  of  armies 
than  for  a  monk,  no  sooner  puts  on  the  monastic  cowl  than 
he  devotes  his  soul  to  three  things — ^viz.,  the  love  of  God's 
divine  religion,  the  love  of  Ireland,  and  the  cultivation  of 
music  and  poetry. 

>  JSTo  hand  was  more  skilful  to  sweep  the  chords  of  the 
lyre;  and  when  those  ancient  monks  assembled  the  an- 
cient chroniclers  tell  us  that  they  loved  to  play  their  harps, 
even  when  they  came  to  the  church  to  sing  the  divine 


186  St.  Columbkille. 

songs — the  Psalms  of  David — in  the  office  they  were  saying 
every  day.  These  old  men  danced  to  the  sound  of  the 
harp,  and  so  from  the  hands  went  forth  the  accompanying 
thrill  of  Erin's  music,  while  with  sweetest  voices  they  me- 
lodiously sang  the  praises  of  Almighty  God.  And  so  rich 
and  grand  was  the  voice  of  the  young  novice  that  we  read 
when  he  was  an  old  man  over  sixty  years  of  age,  while 
preaching  the  Gospel  to  the  Picts  and  Scots,  he  would  stop 
and  begin  to  sing  the  praises  of  God  on  his  Irish  harp. 
The  pagan  priests  who  were  around,  who  did  not  want  to 
let  him  preach,  but  were  interrupting  him — who,  above  all 
things,  did  not  want  him  to  sing,  because  his  voice  had  a 
kind  of  supernatural  power  that  drew  the  hearts  of  the 
pagan  people  to  God — raised  their  voices  and  shouted  in 
order  to  drown  the  voice  of  St.  Columba.  The  Ii'ish  saint 
looked  upon  them  with  the  old  Celtic  fire  of  youth  in  his 
aged  eyes  ;  he  pitched  the  highest  note  and  brought  out 
from  his  harp  the  stronger  chords,  chanting  out  the  Psalms 
of  David  and  the  praises  of  God,  so  that,  although  the 
priests  roared  and  bawled  until  they  were  hoarse,  the  voice 
of  the  saint  sounded  above  them  all.  He  went  over  all  the 
country,  into  the  houses  of  the  people,  singing  the  glory  of 
the  highest  Heaven. 

Everything  went  calmly  and  quietly  with  Columba 
until,  when  he  was  forty  years  of  age,  an  incident  haj)- 
pened  that  gave  tone  to  his  whole  life,  although  it  broke 
his  heart.  TVhen  the  saint  was  forty  years  of  age  he  heard 
that  St.  Finnian  possessed  a  valuable  copy  of  a  part  of  the 
Scriptures,  the  Book  of  Psalms.  St.  Columba  wanted  a 
copy  of  this  book  for  himself,  and  he  went  to  St.  Finnian 
and  begged  the  privilege  of  the  book  to  take  a  copy  of  it. 
He  was  refused ;  the  book  was  too  precious  to  be  trusted 
to  him.  Then  he  asked  at  least  to  be  allowed  to  go  into 
the  church  where  the  book  was  deposited,  and  there  he 
spent  night  after  night  privately,  writing  out  a  clean  copy 
of  it.  By  the  time  St.  Columba  had  finished  his  copy 
somebody  who  had  been  watching  him  at  the  book  went 
and  told  St.  Finnian  that  the  young  man  had  made  a  copy 


St,  Golumbkille.  187 

of  his  psalter.  The  moment  St.  Finnian  heard  of  it  he  laid 
claim  to  this  copy  as  belonging  to  him.  St.  Columba  re- 
fused to  give  it  up,  and  appealed  to  King  Dermott,  the 
Ard-righ,  at  Tara.  The  king  called  his  counsellors  to- 
gether ;  they  considered  the  matter,  and  passed  a  decree 
that  St.  Columba  should  give  up  the  copy,  because  the 
original  belonged  to  St.  Finnian,  the  copy  was  only  bor- 
rowed from  it;  and  the  Irish  decree  began  with  the  words : 
"  Every  cow  has  a  right  to  her  own  calf." 

Now,  mark  the  action  of  Columba — a  saint,  a  man 
devoted  to  prayer  and  fasting  all  the  days  of  his  life, 
a  man  gifted  with  miraculous  powers,  and  yet,  under  aU 
that,  as  thorough-bred  an  Irishman  as  ever  lived.  The 
moment  he  heard  that  the  king  had  resolved  on  giving 
back  the  precious  book  he  reproached  him,  saying  :  "  I  am  a 
cousin  of  yours,  and  there  you  went  against  me."  He  put 
the  clanship — the  ' '  sheanacJius ' '  — upon  him.  (Laughter. ) 
The  king  said  he  could  not  help  it.  What  did  St.  Columba 
do  ?  He  took  his  book  under  his  arm  and  went  away  to 
Ulster,  to  raise  the  clans  of  O'Neill  and  Tyrconnell  of  Tyrone. 
He  was  himself  the  son  of  their  king  ;  they  were  powerful 
clans  in  the  country,  and  the  moment  they  heard  their 
kinsman's  voice  they  rose  as  one  man  ;  for  who  ever  asked 
a  lot  of  Irishmen  to  get  up  a  row  and  was  disappointed  ? 
Laughter.)  They  arose,  they  followed  their  glorious, 
heroic  jnonk  down  to  Westmeath.  There  they  met  the 
king  and  his  army,  and,  I  regret  to  say,  a  battle  was  the 
consequence,  in  which  hundreds  of  men  were  slain,  and  the 
fair  plains  of  the  country  were  flooded  with  blood.  It  was 
only  then  that  St.  Columba  perceived  the  terrible  mistake 
he  had  made.  Like  an  Irishman,  he  first  had  the  fight  out, 
and  then  he  began  to  reflect  on  it  afterwards.     (Laughter.) 

Now,  at  this  time  St.  Columba' s  name  was  known  all 
over  Ireland  for  the  wonderful  spirit  of  prophecy  that  was 
upon  him.  He  was  known  all  over  Ireland  as  a  very  angel 
of  God  for  his  purity.  He  was  already  the  founder  of 
several  famous  monastic  institutions.  In  Ireland  there 
were  twelve  large  monasteries,  and  hundreds  and  thou- 


188  St.  Columbkille. 

sands  of  monks  looked  up  to  Colnmba  as  their  chief.  His 
prophecies  were  wonderfully  fulfilled,  almost  as  soon  as 
uttered.  His  sanctity  was  an  acknowledged  fact ;  and  yet, 
in  the  face  of  all  this,  the  national  Celtic  character,  the 
rash,  quick  temper  in  the  proud  Irishman,  broke  out  in 
him  so  far  that  he  had  hundreds  of  his  countrymen  slain. 
And  the  next  day  after  the  battle  he  was  on  his  knees, 
by  the  side  of  his  priest,  acknowledging  it  all  a  mistake. 
The  bishops  assembled  and  took  thought  over  the  matter, 
and  the  issue  of  it  was  that  poor,  dear  St.  Columba,  with 
all  his  sanctity,  was  excommunicated.  As  for  the  book 
there  was  no  question  ;  he  never  got  it  back.  Strange  to 
say,  my  friends,  that  very  book,  written  by  St.  Columba' s 
own  hand,  remains,  and  is  shown  to  this  day  in  Ireland. 
He  went  to  confess,  with  great  sorrow,  to  an  aged  monk 
named  Manuel.  The  saint  was  broken-hearted  for  what  he 
had  done — for  the  blood  that  had  been  shed,  and,  if  you  will, 
for  the  scandal  of  his  bad  temper.  So  he  had  to  endure  and 
to  accept  any  penance  that  would  be  put  upon  him.  The 
confessor  asked  him  this  question  :  "  What  is  the  strongest 
love  you  have  in  your  heart  ? "  And  the  poor  penitent  an- 
swered :  "The  love  that  I  have  for  Ireland,  that  is  the 
strongest  affection  in  my  heart."  Then  the  most  cruel 
penance  was  put  upon  him — tliat  he  was  to  depart  from 
Ireland,  never  to  see  her  or  to  put  his  foot  upon  her  soil 
again. 

Sentence  passed,  the  man  feU  to  the  earth  as  if  the  hand 
of  God  had  smitten  him,  as  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  feU 
under  His  cross,  which  was  more  than  He  could  bear. 
Rising  up,  with  despairing  eyes  he  looked  on  the  face  of 
the  terrible  confessor  to  whom  he  had  confessed  his  sina; 
then,  making  one  effort,  he  accepted  the  great  sacrifice,  and 
said:  "Father,  what  you  have  said  shall  be  fulfilled." 
Then  he  wrote  a  letter  to  his  friend  Tyrconnell,  in  Ulster ; 
he  said  :  "  My  fall  is  accomplished,  my  doom  is  sealed  ; 
a  man  told  me  that  I  must  exile  myself  from  Ireland,  and 
that  man  I  recognize  as  an  angel  of  God.  I  must  go." 
With  breaking  heart  and  weeping  eyes  he  bade  a  last  fare- 


St.  Columbkille.  189 

well  to  the  green  "Island  of  Saints,"  and  went  to  an 
island  among  the  Hebrides,  on  the  western  coast  of  Scot- 
land. There,  in  the  mist  and  storms  of  that  inhospitable 
region — there,  upon  a  bare  rock  out  from  the  mainland, 
he  built  a  monastery,  and  there  did  he  found  the  far-famed 
school  of  lona.  Then  began  the  second  grand  portion  in 
the  life  of  this  man,  whom  God  had  determined  and  pre- 
destined to  make  so  great  a  saint.  He  came  to  lona  a  man, 
a  prince,  a  saint  of  Ireland,  full  of  passion,  fuU  of  na- 
tionality, full  of  the  love  of  God,  unstained,  unsullied  in 
his  virgin  mind  and  soul  as  any  angel  before  the  throne  of 
God.  And  there  he  was  destined  to  remain  for  thirty-six 
long  years  in  constant  fasting,  in  unceasing  prayer,  until 
the  divine  grace,  descending  upon  him,  made  a  perfect 
saint  of  him  who  was  before  so  noble  a  specimen  of  the 
Celtic  land. 

Now,  do  you  know  how  hard  it  is  for  one  in  exile? 
Here  is  an  account  given  by  one  of  the  greatest  writers  of 
modern  times.  He  tells  us  of  his  love  that  he  retained  for 
Ireland,  the  affectionate  tenderness  of  the  exile,  a  love 
which  displayed  itself  in  the  songs  which  have  been  pre- 
served to  us.  It  is  beautiful.  He  goes  on  to  say  that, 
amongst  other  things,  St.  Columbkille  left  behind  him  such 
words  as  these : 

"Death  in  faultless  Ireland  is  better  than  life  with- 
out end  in  Albion.  What  joy  to  fly  upon  the  white- 
crested  sea  and  watch  the  waves  break  upon  the  Irish 
shore  1  What  joy  to  row  in  my  little  boat  and  land  upon 
the  whitening  foam  of  the  Irish  shore !  Ah  !  how  my  boat 
would  fly  if  its  prow  were  turned  to  my  Irish  oak-groves ! 
But  the  noble  sea  now  carries  me  to  Albion,  the  land  of  the 
raven.  My  foot  is  in  my  little  boat,  but  my  sad  heart  ever 
bleeds,  and  my  gray  eye  ever  turns  to  Erin.  Never  in  this 
sad  life  shall  I  see  Erin  or  her  sons  and  daughters  again. 
From  the  high  prow  I  look  over  the  sea ;  great  tears  are 
in  my  gray  eyes  as  I  turn  to  Erin — to  Erin  where  the  songs 
of  the  birds  are  so  sweet,  where  the  monks  sing  like  the 
birds,  where  the  young  are  so  gentle  and  the  old  so  wise, 


190  St.  Columbkille, 

where  the  men  are  so  noble  to  look  at  and  the  women  so 
fair  to  wed." 

In  another  place  he  says  to  one  who  was  returning  from 
his  Scottish  island  to  Ireland  : 

"  Young  traveller,  take  my  heart  with  thee,  and  my 
blessing ;  carry  them  to  Cornghaiil  of  eternal  light.  Carry 
my  heart  to  Ireland — seven  times  may  she  be  blessed ! — my 
body  to  Albion.  CaiTy  my  blessing  across  the  sea !  Carry 
it  to  the  West !  My  heart  is  broken  in  my  bosom.  If 
death  should  come  upon  me  suddenly,  it  will  be  because  of 
my  great  love  of  the  Gael." 

That  was  the  Irish  people ;  it  was  the  master-passion  of 
his  life. 

What  can  be  more  tender  than  the  message  that  he 
gives  to  one  of  his  monks  ?  One  morning  he  called  from 
the  little  ceUs  in  lona  to  one  of  his  Irish  monks  there  in 
exile.  He  said  to  him :  *' Brother,  go  out  and  stand  upon 
the  hill  near  the  east  shore.  After  you  are  there  a  while  a 
bird  wiU  come  and  fall  at  your  feet  with  her  broken  wing. 
Take  up  that  bird,  dear  brother,"  he  said,  "and  feed  and 
care  for  her  gently,  restore  her  to  strength  again,  for  that 
bird  will  fly  over  to  Ireland.  Ah  !  my  broken  heart,  that 
bird  will  fly  back  to  Ireland  again,  but  I  can  never  go 
back!" 

This  was  the  heart  of  the  man,  the  grand  passion  of  his 
life,  which  became  the  source  of  his  martyrdom.  Exile 
from  Erin  was  to  him  the  bitter  penance  that  the  priest  of 
God  put  upon  him  after  the  great  indiscretion  and  sin  of 
his  life.  Yet  it  was  an  Irish  sin.  He  did  not  want  to  glory 
in  anything  wrong ;  and  this  I  do  say,  if  it  was  a  great 
Irish  sin,  there  was  nothing  mean  in  that  sin ;  it  was  the 
sin  of  a  bmve,  passionate  man.  He  felt  he  was  injured, 
and  he  called  upon  his  people,  and  bloodshed  followed 
upon  it.  It  was  the  act  of  an  impulsive  man  ;  nothing  vile 
to  be  ashamed  of,  nothing  that  the  recollection  of  which 
could  bring  anything  but  a  manly  sorrow  to  his  heart.  It 
was  the  Irish  sin. 

Now  began  a  great  period  of  his  life.    He  was  forty- 


St.  Columbkille.  191 

two  years  of  age  when  lie  left  Ireland  and  landed  on  the 
little  island  off  the  western  coast  of  Scotland.  Here  his 
Irish  monks  built  a  wooden  church,  and  here  that  man 
lived  in  the  humblest  of  cells.  St.  Columba  for  forty 
years  slept  upon  the  bare  ground  an  hour  or  two  out  of 
the  twenty-four.  Thus  he  lay,  with  a  hard  rock  whereon 
to  lay  his  head.  This  island  on  which  the  Irish  monks 
landed  was  destined  to  be  the  most  holy,  the  most  glori- 
ously historic  spot  in  Western  Europe.  He  brought  monks 
from  Ireland  with  him,  and  there  upon  the  distant  shores 
of  Scotland  did  he  find  a  people  divided  into  two  great 
nations — viz.,.  the  Irish  who  had  emigrated  hundreds  of 
years  before,  in  the  very  time  of  St.  Patrick,  who  were 
Christians,  having  brought  their  Catholic  religion  with 
them,  and  who  possessed  the  southern  and  western  por- 
tions of  Scotland.  But  the  northern  and  eastern  portions 
of  the  land  were  in  the  hands  of  another  nation,  the  most 
terrible,  the  most  brave,  and  withal  the  most  savage  that 
ever  the  Roman  legions  encountered.  They  were  called 
the  ancient  Picts.  So  brave  were  they  that  when  Julius 
Caesar  conquered  the  whole  of  England  he  never  was  able 
to  conquer  the  Picts  and  warlike  savages  that  inhabited 
Scotland. 

As  they  were  brave  to  resist  invasion,  so  were  they  also 
brave,  with  an  infernal  bravery,  in  resisting  the  Gospel. 
Holy  saints  came  to  them  only  to  be  torn  to  pieces  and 
slaughtered.  The  hour  of  their  redemption  came  from  the 
hour  when  St.  Columbkille  landed  on  the  island  of  lona. 
He  brought  a  large  colony  of  Irish  monks,  and  his  first 
mission  was  to  his  own  Irish  people  settled  in  Scotland. 
They  were  governed  by  a  ruler  subject  to  the  king  of  Ire- 
land. He  went  in  amongst  them  not  to  preach  the  Gospel, 
for  that  they  had  already  received,  but  to  preach  that 
which  in  the  heart  and  on  the  lips  of  the  Irish  priest  is 
next  to  the  Gospel.  He  went  in  amongst  his  exiled  Irish 
brethren  to  preach  the  Gospel  and  love  for  their  native 
land.  He  spoke  to.  them  in  the  language  of  the  bard  and 
of  the  poet  of  the  ancient  glories  of  Ireland.    He  told  them 


192  St.  Columbkille. 

that,  although,  they  were  established  in  a  foreign  land, 
their  best  and  holiest  remembrance,  their  grandest  and 
noblest  influence,  was  the  recollection  of  the  land  from 
which  they  and  their  fathers  came.  He  chose  one  of  their 
princes  to  be  king.  He  banded  them  together  into  a  king- 
dom, and  he  crowned  that  Irish  prince  the  first  king  of 
Scotland.  And  that  Irish  colony  of  Caledonian  Scots,  as 
it  was  called,  was  destined  to  conquer  the  terrible,  savage 
Picts,  and  the  first  man  that  reigned  was  the  holy  Irish 
Prince  Aden. 

WeU,  my  friends,  it  is  most  interesting  to  us  to  find 
that  the  very  day  that  St.  Columba  crowned  the  Scotch 
king  he  made  this  speech  to  him :  "Mark  my  words,'*  he 
said,  "0  king!  the  day  may  come  when  you  and  your 
children  after  you  may  be  tempted  by  the  devil  to  make 
war  upon  Ireland — ^upon  Ireland,"  he  said,  "the  land  of 
my  love,  the  land  of  my  race,  and  of  my  blood."  And 
here  are  the  words  that  he  put  upon  that  king.  In  the 
midst  of  the  ceremony  of  the  coronation  he  said  to  the 
king  whom  he  crowned :  "Charge  your  sons,  and  let  them 
charge  their  grandchildren,  that  they  attempt  no  enter- 
prise against  my  countrymen  and  my  kindred  in  Ireland, 
the  land  of  God,  or  the  hand  of  God  will  weigh  heavily 
upon  them,  the  hand  of  men  will  be  raised  against  them, 
and  the  victory  of  their  enemies  will  be  sure  in  the  day 
they  have  the  misfortune  and  the  curse  of  turning  against 
Ireland."  There  was  the  glorious  law  of  the  Irish  priest- 
hood and  of  Irish  history  ;  there  was  the  true  father  of  the 
heroic  St.  Laurence  0' Toole,  that  stood  in  the  gap  on  that 
terrible  day,  when  no  man  in  Ireland  seemed  to  have  heart 
or  courage  enough  to  strike  a  blow  in  the  invading  enemy's 
face. 

Aden  was  king.  He  was  not  long  crowned  when  the 
Saxons,  who  invaded  England— that  is  to  say,  the  country 
that  was  south  of  the  Grampian  Hills — invaded  Scotland 
also.  The  king  had  to  go  forth  to  do  battle  against  them, 
and  here  again  we  find  our  ancient  Irish  saint  coming  out. 
Faithful  love  for  his  race  and  country,  which  had  moved 


St.  Columbkille.  193 

him  witli  compassion  for  the  young  Irish  kingdom,  did  not 
permit  him  to  remain  indifferent  to  the  wars  and  revolu- 
tions which  were  at  the  time  of  the  Irish  Scots.  There  was 
no  more  marked  feature  in  his  character  than  his  constant, 
his  compassionate  sympatliy,  as  well  after  as  before  his 
removal  to  lona,  in  all  the  struggles  in  which  his  com- 
panions and  relatives  in  Ireland  are  so  often  engaged. 
Nothing  was  nearer  to  his  heart  than  the  claim  of  kindred. 
For  that  reason  alone  he  occupied  himself  without  ceasing 
in  the  affairs  of  individuals  and  relatives.  "This  man," 
he  would  say,  "  is  of  my  race.  I  must  help  him.  It  is  my 
duty  to  work  for  him,  because  he  is  of  the  same  stock  as 
myself."  "This  other  man  is  a  relative  of  my  mother's." 
Then  he  would  add,  speaking  to  his  Scottish  monks : 
' ''  My  friends,  they  are  my  kindred,  descended  from  the 
O'Neills;  see  them  fighting,"  when  he  would  hear  of  a 
victory,  or  perhaps  he  said  it  to  Heaven  before  the  throne 
of  God  in  the  day  when  Red  Hugh  O'Neill  destroyed  the 
English  army  at  the  Yellow  Ford ;  or  when  in  the  day 
Owen  Roe  O'Neill,  and  perhaps  O'Donnell,  proclaimed 
before  God,  and  before  the  angels  and  aU  high  powers — 
' '  How  the  0'  Neills  and  the  O'  Donnells  knew  him  to  fight !  " 
He  was  praying  one  day  with  his  famed  companion  monk 
named  Dermot,  and  whilst  they  were  speaking  together 
the  saint  said:  "Rise,  O  Dermot !  ring  the  bell  and  call 
the  monks  to  pray."  The  monk  rang  the  bell,  and  all  the 
other  monks  of  the  monastery  came  around  the  father. 
iHere  are  his  words  :  "Now,"  he  said,  "let  us  pray  with 
intelligence  and  fervor  for  our  people,  for  King  Aden,  who 
at  this  very  minute  is  beginning  his  battle  with  the  bar- 
barians." They  prayed,  and  after  a  time  Columba  said: 
"  I  behold  the  barbarians  fly.  Aden  is  victorious."  Who 
were  the  barbarians  ?  The  Saxons  of  England,  the  pagan 
Saxons,  the  haters  of  religion  and  his  Irish  people,  the 
haters  of  Aden,  the  Irish  king,  and  his  religion. 

Another  nation  lay  before  him,  and  the  heart  of  the 
saint  was  touched  for  them..  You  have  seen  what  he  did 
for  his  own  countrymen  in  Scotland.     He  saw  in  the  north- 


194  St.  Columbkille, 

em  fastnesses  of  the  land  those  uncivilized,  savage,  pagan 
Picts,  the  men  to  whom  no  missionary  was  ever  able  to 
preach,  the  men  whom  no  preacher  dared  to  address. 
And  here  again  see  how  the  character  of  the  saint  came 
out.  He  arose  and  took  with  him  a  few  of  his  Irish 
monks,  and  they  travelled  into  the  very  heart  of  their 
country  and  the  islands  of  Scotland.  He  went  in  order  to 
preach  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  to  the  Picts.  Their  king 
had  established  himself  in  a  mighty  fortress  with  his  pagan 
priests.  They  were  noticed,  and  when  from  the  towers  the 
king  saw  the  brave  missionary,  the  magnificent  form  of  the 
Irishman,  coming  he  admired  his  manliness  and  his  prince- 
ly courage.  He  saw  the  light  of  the  sun  beaming  upon 
his  grand  face,  and  he  loved  him,  but  he  gave  orders  that 
the  gates  of  the  fortress  should  not  be  opened.  "Tell  him 
no  man  shall  enter  here  a  guest  who  is  not  welcome,  and 
that  if  he  attempts  to  preach  he  will  die." 

The  message  was  given,  but  Columba,  without  hesita- 
tion, without  stopping  to  take  counsel,  without  one  mo- 
ment's prudence,  the  moment  he  heard  the  king  say  he 
should  not  come  his  Irish  blood  was  up,  and  it  seemed  to 
him  there  was  no  reason  why  he  should  not  go  in.  He 
went  straight  to  the  very  door  of  the  castle  and  dealt  it  a 
mighty  blow  with  his  staff.  "Open,"  he  said,  "in  the 
name  of  the  Father  and  of  the  Son  and  of  the  Holy 
Ghost."  Again  he  struck  it,  and  the  mighty  gates  fell 
open,  and  St.  Columbkille  of  lona  walked  in  like  a  con- 
queror. There  was  the  king  on  his  throne,  angry,  thirsting 
for  his  blood.  Finding  the  pagan  priests  around  him 
claiming  that  he  had  violated  their  laws,  and  that  he 
should  be  put  to  death,  he  lifted  up  that  terrible  voice  of 
his  in  the  Irish  language,  which  was  easily  understood  by 
the  Gaels  or  the  Picts.  He  said :  "I  would  here  speak  to- 
day. I  tell  the  king  to  his  face,  and  the  chieftains,  I  am 
Columba  of  lona,  and  would  make  them  take  the  Gospel, 
if  I  had  to  drive  it  down  their  throats." 

Years  of  sorrow,  years  of  repentance,  years  of  prayer 
and  of  fasting  had  passed  over  his  head,  and  just  now  an 


JSt.  Columbkille,  195 

elderly  man  beyond  the  prime  of  life  ;  but  the  moment 
opposition  comes  to  him  in  a  just  cause,  that  moment  the 
old  Irish  blood  of  his  youth  and  aU  the  terrible  ardor  of 
his  Celtic  nature  is  raised  within  him.  My  friends,  he  con- 
verted the  Pict  nation  nearly  as  perfectly  as  Patrick  con- 
verted the  Irish.  He  left  his  character  upon  them,  so  that 
they  became  a  stanch,  and  loyal,  and  true  Catholic  race 
in  the  Highlands  of  Scotland,  as  they  continue  to  be 
almost  to  the  present  hour.  Yes  !  there  are  villages  in  the 
Highlands  of  Scotland  which  have  suffered  for  the  defence 
of  their  faith  like  in  Ireland,  suffered  by  bad  landlords ; 
the  same  scourge  came  upon  them  of  English  Protestant- 
ism and  bad  laws  ;  but  the  tradition  of  Ireland's  Columba 
was  with  them,  and  his  words  remained  with  them  like  a 
blessing.  And  there  are  villages  in  Scotland  that  nev^ 
yet  lost  their  Catholic  faith  through  weal  or  through  woe. 

Now  another  nation  lay  before  him.  Great  was  the  heart 
of  the  man  and  true.  He  saw  the  pagan  Saxons  of  England 
in  their  hundreds  and  thousands.  What  did  they  worship  ? 
They  worshipped  the  meanest  and  lowest  forms  of  idola- 
try ;  they  had  not  the  grace  to  worship  the  sun  like  the 
Irish.  They  worshipped  Thor,  the  god  of  the  Scandi- 
navians, a  huge  fellow,  with  goggle  eyes,  no  feet,  and  a 
big  club  in  his  hands.  They  were  Saxons !  St.  Columba 
neither  loved  nor  liked  them.  They  were  Saxons  !  Per- 
haps he,  being  a  prophet,  foresaw  that  they  would  be  the 
"scourge  of  God"  to  the  land  of  his  love.  They  were 
Saxons  !  They  had  assaulted  and  invaded  the  land  of  his 
own  people  in  Scotland  and  the  king  whom  he  had 
crowned.  But  they  were  men,  and  they  had  souls,  and  he 
loved  them  with  the  mighty  love  that  burned  in  his  heart  for 
tlie  'Lord  and  Saviour  who  died  for  him.  So,  accordingly, 
we  find  after  his  conversion  of  the  Picts  that  the  mighty 
preacher  went  south,  and,  with  the  aid  of  his  monastic 
brethren  after  him,  the  Irish  St.  Columbkille  converted  all 
the  Saxons  of  Northampton  and  the  middle  portions  of 
England. 

Badly  have  they  repaid  us,  for  we  gave  them  faith,  and 


198  St.    COLUMBKttLE. 

they  endeavored  to  rob  us  of  our  faith.  We  gave  them, 
through  our  great  St.  ColumbkiUe,  the  liberty  of  the 
angels  of  God,  and  they  have  endeavored  to  deprive  us  of 
that  Uberty  which  is  the  inheritance  and  birthright  of  the 
children  of  men.  We  gave  them  light,  and  they  have  en- 
deavored to  repay  us  with  darkness.  And  though  St. 
Augustine  came  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  the  Saxons  of  Eng- 
land, his  labors  were  only  in  the  south.  St.  ColumbkiHe 
and  his  children  had  already  converted  the  Saxons  of  the 
Korth  of  England.  They  were  the  true  apostles  of  Eng- 
land. 

And  now  old  age  was  upon  him ;  he  was  approaching 
his  seventy-sixth  year ;  and  we  read  two  things  of  him— 
namely,  that  to  the  last  day  of  his  life  he  never  mitigated 
or  changed  his  austerities.     The  old  man  of  seventy-six 
still  lay  upon  the  damp  earth  with  a  rock  for  his  pillow. 
The  old  man  of  seventy-six  still  fasted  every  day  of  his 
life.    The  old  man  of  seventy-six  seemed  to  have  a  heart 
as  young,  as  compassionate,  as  tender,  as  if  he  were  a  boy 
of  fourteen.     And  one  little  incident  shows  us  how  much 
the  Irish  fire  was  tamed  down  in  him  by  the  sanctity  of 
the  saint.     When  he  was  an  old  man  the  great  feature  of 
his  character  was  that  he  still  continued  the  holy  work  as 
hard  as  when  he  was  young,  writing  a  copy  of  the  Sacred 
Scriptures.    The  great  passion  of  his  life  was  writing  books. 
There  was  no  printing  in  those  days.    He  wrote  books  even 
when  he  was  bent  to  the  earth  with  old  age  and  austerities. 
Yet  he  fired  up  into  the  ardor  of  the  young  harpist  as  he 
took  the  Irish  harp  and  with  his  aged  fingers  swept  the 
chords,  his  voice  pouring  forth  the  praises  of  Ireland  and 
of  his  God.    We  read  that  when  he  was  an  old  man  some 
strangers  that  were  there  in  the  land  were  coming  to  him 
for  his  blessing.     And  one  day  a  man  came  into  the  little 
room  where  St.  Columba  was  writing,  and  in  his  eagerness 
to  get  the  saint's  blessing  he  rushed  with  such  vehemence 
to  where  the  saint  was  that  he  overturned  the  ink-bottle 
and  destroyed  the  whole  manuscript.    Oh  !  if  he  did  that 
thirty  or  forty  years  before.     (Laughter.) 


St.    boLUMBKILLE.  197 

But  all  the  old  saint  did  now  was  to  take  Mm  and  em- 
bmce  liim,  put  his  arms  about  him,  and  say  :  ' '  Have  pa- 
tience, my  son ;  be  gentle  ;  do  not  be  in  such  a  hurry." 
He  was  seventy-six  years  of  age,  and  he  prayed  that  he 
might  die  at  Easter.  Grod  sent  an  angel  to  tell  him  that 
his  prayer  was  granted.  Now,  mark  the  Irish  heart  again. 
The  moment  that  he  heard  his  prayer  was  granted  he 
prayed  to  G-od  to  let  him  live  for  another  month,  for  he 
said  to  the  monks  :  "  My  children,  I  prayed  that  I  might 
die  and  pass  my  Easter  Sunday  in  heaven.  God  said  He 
would  grant  my  prayer  ;  but  then  I  thought  that  you  are 
after  fasting  a  long  Lent  upon  bread  and  water,  and  that 
you  are  all  looking  forward  to  Easter  Sunday  as  a  day  of 
joy  ;  and  if  I  died  on  that  day  it  would  be  a  sad  and  sor- 
rowful day,  so  I  asked  my  God  to  put  it  off  a  month  more." 
The  month  passed.  It  was  Saturday  night,  and  Columba 
in  the  morning  told  his  children,  the  monks  :  ''  This  night 
I  will  die  and  take  my  rest."  The  monks  were  accustomed 
to  go  into  the  church  precisely  at  twelve  o'clock.  The 
bells  rang,  and  Columba  was  always  in  the  church  at 
prayer.  When  he  was  not  studying  he  went  before  the 
others  into  the  dark  church.  There  was  no  light,  and  he 
knelt  at  the  foot  of  the  altar.  Dermot,  his  servant,  his 
faithful  man,  followed  the  old  man,  and,  groping  about  in 
the  church  for  him,  at  first  not  being  able  to  see  him,  ex- 
claimed :  "O  father!  dear  father,  where  art  thou?"  A 
feeble  moan  soon  v/as  heard,  and  he  came  to  where  he  lay. 
The  other  monks  came  in  and  brought  torches  in  their 
hands,  and  found  Columba  stretched  out  dyings  grasping 
the  foot  of  the  altar — dying,  with  a  heart  long  since 
broken  with  love  for  the  Lord  Jesus  and  for  the  dear  land 
that  he  left  behind  him  !  They  lifted  him  up,  and  with  his 
dying  lips  he  said:  ''Come  around  me,  that  I  may  give 
you  my  last  blessing."  He  lifted  his  aged  hands,  and  be- 
fore the  sign  of  the  cross  was  made  the  hands  fell  by  his 
side,  the  light  of  human  love  departed  from  his  eye,  and 
one  of  the  most  glorious  souls  among  apostles  and  martyrs 


-^. 


198 


JSt.  Columbkille. 


that  ever  passed  into  Thy  kingdom,  O  Lord !  beheld  Thee 
in  Thy  joy. 

This  was  our  old  saint.  How  grand,  how  great  in  his 
national  character  !  How  great  the  character  of  the  saint 
in  his  cell  I 


'^Hr'' 


% 


The  Catholic  Church  in  America. 


The  following  magnificent  lecture  was  delivered  by  Father  Burke  in  Munster 
Hall,  Cork,  soon  after  his  return  to  Ireland.  The  attendance  was  very 
large,  embracing  the  best  society  of  Cork.  Father  Burke  was  introduced 
by  the  mayor,  who  said  :  "  Ladies  and  gentlemen,  it  is  usual  upon  an  oc- 
casion of  this  kind  for  the  chairman  to  introduce  the  lecturer.  I  am 
sure  you  will  join  me  in  the  sentiment  that  it  is  the  very  merest  of  for- 
malities to  introduce  to  an  Irish-hearted  audience  such  a  lecturer  as  Fa- 
ther Burke,  and  upon  such  a  subject  as  the  Catholic  Church  in  America. 
(Cheers.)  "Without  further  preface  I  beg  to  introduce  to  you  Father 
Burke."  Father  Burke  then  came  forward,  and  was  received  with  cheers 
and  waving  of  hats.    He  said  : 

TT  is  now  some  months  since  I  returned  fr'^'m  the  great 
■*•  land  of  the  West.  Whilst  I  was  in  America  I  was  in  the 
habit  of  addressing  large  audiences  of  my  fellow-country- 
men, and  they  gradually  made  me  brave  from  the  kindness 
of  their  reception.  (Hear.)  I  have  now  spent  some  time 
in  retiiement — preaching  only  as  a  priest — and  I  feel,  com- 
ing forward  here  this  evening,  something  of  the  nervousness, 
the  timidity,  which  I  felt  when  I  first  had  the  honor  to  ad- 
dress an  Irish  audience  in  America  as  a  lecturer.  But  the 
kindness  of  my  reception  has  somewhat  calmed  and  toned 
it  down.  I  beg  to  thank  you  for  the  cheers  with  which 
you  have  received  me  this  evening.  I  know  that  your  kind 
welcome  is  given  me  not  at  all  as  an  Irishman — for  as  such 
I  would  not  value  it — but  that  it  is  given  me,  first,  as  an 
Irish  priest,  and,  secondly,  as  a  man  whom  Almighty  God 
gave,  with  high  grace,  high  privilege,  the  opportunity  of 
speaking  in  vindication  of  the  glorious  land  tliat  bore  him. 
(Cheers.)  I  feel,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  somewhat  nervous 
iu  approaching  the  subject  of  this  evening's  lecture  for  one 

199 


200  The  Catholic  Church  in  America. 

reason  out  of  many— namely,  that  the  subject  which  I  pro- 
pose for  your  consideration  and  attention  has  been  already 
brought  before  you  and  before  the  world  by  one  of  Ireland's 
best  and  noblest  sons — the  late  John  Francis  Maguire. 
(Great  cheering. )  Wherever  I  went  in  America  I  only  fol- 
lowed in  his  footsteps;  and  I  say  more  than  that,  I 
derived  assistance  from  every  page  of  that  very  remark- 
able book  which  this  truly  good  and  great  man  has  left 
after  him  in  the  language  of  a  most  enlightened  and  truly 
Irish  heart.  (Cheers.)  I  pay  this  tribute  in  the  beginning 
more  willingly  to  John  Francis  Maguire  because  at  the 
time  his  death  spread  grief  through  every  true  Irish  heart, 
both  here  and  in  America,  my  public  lectures  in  America 
were  drawing  to  a  close,  and  I  had  no  opportunity  given 
me  of  expressing  in  the  Western  land  the  feelings  of  my 
heart,  which  would  have  found  an  echo  in  every  Irishman's 
bosom,  at  the  loss  of  the  distinguished  fellow-citizen  taken 
away  from  you. 

JTow,  I  say  again,  addressing  Corkmen,  familiar  with 
the  words  of  this  great  Corkman,  that  I  feel  I  am  utterly 
inadequate  to  the  theme  I,  have  undertaken,  and  yet  per- 
haps there  is  not  amongst  them  any  subject  that  could 
occupy  the  attention  of  the  public  lecturer,  and  indeed 
the  observation  of  any  trained  mind,  more  wonderful  as 
well  as  interesting  than  tracing  the  origin  and  progress 
and  forecasting  the  future  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  Ame- 
rica. (Cheers.)  We  know,  my  friends,  no  matter  what 
philosophers  may  tell  us  of  our  origin  when  they  ask  us 
to  believe  that  we  came  from  the  ancestral  ape  or  the 
oyster,  or  tell  us  of  the  theory  of  chance — we  know  both 
as  reasoning  men  and  as  Christians  that  the  Almighty  God, 
with  providential  mind  as  well  as  providential  hands, 
steers,  directs,  and  governs  the  progress  and  destinies  of 
all  this  world  of  ours.  (Hear,  hear.)  We  know  that  the 
true  philosophy  of  history  lies  precisely  in  this  :  of  being 
able  to  trace  the  mind  and  the  hand  of  Almighty  God's 
providence  in  all  tjie  events  from  the  tissue  of  what  the 
world  calls  history.     (Hear,  hear.) 


The  Catholic  Church  in  America.  aoi 

l^ow,  it  has  often  struck  me  that  the  close  of  the  fif- 
teenth centuiy,  famous  for  so  many  discords,  was  re- 
markable for  three  mighty  and  solemn  events— the  birth  of 
Martin  Luther  in  1483,  the  discovery  of  America  by  Chris- 
topher Columbus  in  1492,  and  about  the  same  Lime 
the  birth  of  St.  Ignatius  of  Loyola.  Never,  perhaps,  since 
the  banner  of  Christianity  was  unfurled— never  were  there 
three  men  who  exercised  greater  influence  upon  their  age. 
We  have  in  the  year  1492  a  man  dreaming  of  the  existence 
of  a  mighty  continent  which  we  now  know  by  the  name  of 
America.  The  nations  of  Europe,  fatigued  by  the  failure 
of  the  Eastern  crusades,  multiplied  in  numbers,  found  no 
outlet  but  to  spend  their  energies  upon  vain  pursuits  of 
learning  and  philosophy,  which  they  had  yet  scarcely 
learned  to  understand,  and  which  brought  with  it  what  is 
called  the  Refoi-mation,  or,  in  other  words,  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  human  intelligence  from  religious  and  infallible 
authority  in  teaching  concerning  God.  But  any  man  who 
reads  the  history  of  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century  will 
find  that  minds  were  disturbed,  some  seeking  to  find 
foundation  for  their  theories  on  philosophical  speculation 
most  unsound,  some  in  researching  through  relics  of  pagan 
antiquity,  and  some,  again,  restless  minds  like  Christopher 
Columbus  and  the  Castilian  of  that  day,  dreaming  golden 
dreams,  romantic  dreams  of  yet  undiscovered  countries, 
and  calling  them  by  the  name  of  El  Dorado,  or  places  where 
there  are  fields  of  gold.  Then  a  man  appeared  who  unit- 
ed with  the  immensity  of  his  genius  a  remarkable  meek- 
ness, a  gentleness,  a  piety  of  manners,  together  with  a 
wonderful  strength  of  the  Catholic  faith,  and  that  waa 
Christopher  Columbus,  whose  message  was  this  :  "  I  know 
there  is  far  beyond  the  trackless  ocean  a  land  yet  undis- 
covered. Give  me  means  and  I  will  open  unto  you  a  new 
and  wonderful  world."  He  was  furnished  with  a  few 
small,  crazy  ships,  and  it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  the 
vessels  which  first  crossed  the  Atlantic  were  so  small,  so 
badly  fitted  out,  so  terribly  unfitted  for  the  work  cut  out 
for  them  that  perhaps  the  jjravest  captain  or  sailor  of  the 


30^  Tbe  Catholic  Church  in  America, 

present  day  would  not  have  the  courage  to  cross  the 
Atlantic  in  them,  those  almost  open  boats  in  which  Chris- 
topher Columbus  sailed  and  discovered  America. 

There  was  in  the  heart  of  Columbus  a  high  and  glorious 
purpose,  and  that  splendid  light  of  faith.  He  never  un- 
dertook this  task  of  discovering  a  strange  country  for  the 
mere  purpose  of  enriching  himself,  but  for  the  high,  gene- 
rous faith  that  was  in  him.  (Hear.)  He  dreamed  of  lands 
yet  undiscovered,  where  he  would  find  peoples,  where  he 
would  find  numerous  beings  who  had  never  heard  the  name 
of  Christ ;  and  the  saintly  Columbus  had  in  his  heart  only 
the  desire  to  find  them  out,  in  order  that  he  might  unfurl 
the  standard  of  the  cross  amongst  them,  and  gain  millions 
of  souls  to  heaven  through  Jesus  Christ.    (Applause.) 

If  ever  there  was  a  land  that  owes  its  discovery  to  Ca- 
tholic faith.  Catholic  ardor.  Catholic  instinct,  that  land  is 
America.  (Hear.)  If  ever  there  was  a  land  whicli  might  be 
said  to  have  sprung  into  its  acknowledged  existence  from 
out  the  mind  and  heart  of  a  man  who  was  the  very  type 
of  the  Catholic  heart,  that  land  was  America  ;  and,  in  fact, 
Columbus,  in  crossing  the  trackless  ocean,  turning  liis  prow 
to  the  West,  laying  firm  hand  upon  his  helm,  and  whilst 
the  eye  tracked  the  setting  sun  upon  the  placid  waves,  the 
mind  of  the  great  mariner  was  exalted  to  heaven,  and  hope 
and  prayer  went  forth  fix)m  his  lips.  (Cheers.)  Seeing  no 
sign  of  land  ai)pearing,  going  further  and  further  on  the 
ocean  of  the  untravelled,  unknown  West,  his  mariners  lost 
courage,  and  turned  to  him  and  said:  "Let  us  return  to 
our  home  and  our  kindred." 

But  the  great  Columbus,  guided  by  a  better  light  than 
the  setting  sun,  still  went  on,  until  upon  that  glorious  morn- 
ing he  beheld  Hispaniola,  the  island  of  San  Domingo,  and  his 
first  act  was  to  plant  the  cross  of  Jesus  Christ.  (Applause.) 
He  called  upon  the  priests  who  accompanied  him  to  bless 
the  land,  and  he  proclaimed  that  America— its  mountains, 
its  rivers,  its  plains,  its  cities,  and  its  peoples— was  the 
property  of  God  and  of  Spain.  (Cheers.)  He  was  accom- 
panied by  friars  of  the  Dominican  and  Franciscan  Orders — 


The  Catholic  Church  in  America,  ^03 

(cheers) — with  whose  faith  and  hope  he  was  identified,  for 
the  others  who  accompanied  him  looked  for  gold  and 
wealth. 

Now,  history  tells  of  the  Spanish  Federation  in  South 
America.  History  tells  us  of  the  depredations  committed 
by  the  founders,  the  cruelties  exercised  upon  the  simple, 
hospitable,  generous,  gentle  people ;  but  history  also  re- 
calls to  us  what  is  very  glorious,  that  in  South  America, 
wherever  the  standard  of  religion  was  raised  by  the  good 
friar,  no  matter  how  powerful  the  natives  or  how  intracta- 
ble the  Indians,  they  always  found  a  glorious  protector  in 
the  followers  of  St.  Francis  and  St.  Dominic.    (Cheers.) 

Meantime  there  were  other  discoveries  going  on.  Other 
navigators  were  plying  the  Atlantic  now  in  the  wake  of 
Columbus ;  but  a  great  event  in  the  meantime  had  hap- 
pened, and  here  see  the  providence  of  God.  Luther  had 
proclaimed  what  is  called  "the  Reformation."  Truth  was 
no  longer  to  be  respected.  It  was  torn  into  a  thousand  frag- 
ments. Almost  all  the  northern  states  of  Europe  started 
their  churches — Sweden,  Denmark,  Germany,  and  a  large 
portion  of  France  even ;  and  England,  emphatically  and 
most  prominent  of  all,  became  Protestant,  and  separated 
from  the  Catholic  Church.  The  consequence  was  that 
whilst  Columbus  and  the  children  of  Spain,  with  their  Ca- 
tholic hearts,  were  carrying  the  truth  and  spreading  it  in 
the  southern  portion  of  America,  the  northern  portion, 
which  now  constitutes  the  United  States,  was  discovered 
and  colonized  by  Englishmen.  They  brought  with  them, 
as  Bishop  Spalding  said,  strong  religious  prejudices  and 
bigotry,  and  the  words  of  this  learned  bishop  are  borne  out, 
for  they  were  the  first  to  introduce  religious  persecution  in 
America.     (Hear,  hear.) 

Instantly  that  they  proclaimed  Protestantism  in  Eng- 
land, that  religion,  as  it  is  called,  brought  with  it  various 
sects.  That  was  a  thing  necessary  to  follow,  because,  upon 
their  principle,  there  was  no  certain  acknowledged  religious 
truth  revealed  to  us — that  there  was  something  true  laid 
down  in  a  certain  book,  and  that  they  were  to  take  that 


204  The  Catholic  Church  ijv  America. 

book  and  read  it,  every  one  according  to  the  reasoning  of 
his  own  individual  mind,  and  according  to  his  own  private 
judgment  was  to  discover  his  whole  religion.  Whatever 
discovery  he  made,  whatever  his  religion  may  be,  he  was 
bound  in  conscience  to  follow  the  deductions  of  his  own 
private  judgment.  iN'ow,  such  a  system  as  this  involves 
two  things,  my  friends  :  first,  it  involves  an  inherent  right 
in  every  man  to  choose  his  own  religion  according  to  his 
own  interpretation  of  that  book  which  is  called  the  Bible, 
and  which  is  undoubtedly  the  Word  of  God.  It  involves  in 
every  man  who  embraces  the  principle  of  private  judgment 
not  only  a  right  but  an  obligation  to  select  his  own  religion 
and  stand  by  it ;  and,  secondly,  it  involves  necessarily  an 
utter  weakness,  for  it  forces  a  man  to  conform  himself  to 
your  views.  Therefore,  what  the  Protestant  religion  de- 
clares is  illogical,  and  it  is  a  fact  that  since  blood  first  red- 
dened this  earth  there  has  not  been  a  fiercer  spirit  of  perse- 
cution existing  amongst  men  than  we  find  existing  amongst 
these  sects  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

I  say  this  not  in  a  spirit  of  disrespect  nor  in  any  spirit 
of  religious  hatred.  I  lay  it  down  simply  as  a  logical  phe- 
nomenon and  historical  fact.  I  know  that  liberal-minded 
Protestants  of  the  present  day  detest  and  abhor  the  acts  of 
their  forefathers  as  much  as  any  right-minded  man  can  de- 
test and  abhor  persecution.  I  know  very  well  that  if  the 
history  of  that  period  was  to  be  rewritten,  and  if  these 
men — liberal-minded  Protestants — of  whom  I  speak  had 
the  rewriting  of  it,  that  the  blood  which  stains  its  pages 
would  not  be  there.  But  history  is  history,  and  fact  is 
fact.  Some  Englishmen,  using  their  right,  and  undoubted 
right,  as  Protestants,  have  disagreed  with  other  Englishmen 
on  the  question  of  religion,  and  at  once  they  were  subjected 
to  the  most  terrible  persecution.  There  were  Dissenters  or 
Nonconformists  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centu- 
ries ;  they  fled  from  the  persecution  which  they  were  not 
able  to  stand  in  England  ;  they  fled  from  the  demon  of  re- 
ligious persecution  and  bloodshed  ;  they  sought  refuge  in 
America,  in  order  that  they  might  there,  in  a  new  country, 


The  Catholic  Church  in  Ameriqa.  205 

practise  and  exercise  their  own  religion  and  opinions  in 
peace,  and  no  longer  have  to  suffer  for  them.  No  man 
denies  that  they  were  right,  that  they  had  reason,  sup- 
posing the  truth  of  the  principle  upon  which  they  stood,  not 
to  acknowledge  any  supreme  power  upon  earth  to  which 
all  men  shall  bow  down  in  obedience  in  matters  of 
religion. 

But  here  again  is  the  strange  fact  that  no  sooner  were 
these  men  landed  in  America,  no  sooner  had  they  taken 
possession  of  that  part  of  the  country  which  is  called  the 
New  England  States,  than  the  first  thing  they  did  was  to 
make  laws  to  persecute  every  one  that  disagreed  with  them. 
(Laughter.)  There  was  to  be  no  mercy  for  the  Quaker. 
(Laughter.)  I  will  read  some  of  their  prominent  laws  for 
you  about  Quakers.  Listen  to  this  :  "It  is  ordered  that 
whosoever  shall  henceforth  bring  or  cause  to  be  brought, 
directly  or  indirectly,  into  the  colonies  any  known  Quaker — 
(laughter) — or  any  other  blasphemous  heretic" — (laughter) 
— after  the  Quakers  themselves  it  was  any  one  who  should 
bring  them  in — "  every  such  person  shall  forfeit  the  sum  of 
£100  to  the  country,  and  he  shall  be  committed  to  prison, 
there  to  remain  until  the  penalty  be  satisfied  ;  and  if  any 
person  within  this  jurisdiction  shall  entertain  or  conceal  any 
such  Quaker — (laughter) — and  that  he,  Quaker,  be  caught 
— (laughter) — every  such  male  Quaker  shall,  for  the  first 
offence,  have  one  of  his  ears  cut  off,  and  he  shall  be  kept  at 
work  in  the  House  of  Correction  until  he  can  be  sent  away 
at  his  own  charge,  and  if  he  go  back  again,  for  the  second 
offence  he  shall  have  the  other  ear  cut  off."  (Laughter.) 
Like  the  fellow  in  Galway  that  was  eating  the  goose  :  he 
first  took  off  one  wing  and  leg  on  one  side,  then  said  he : 
"  It  is  a  pity  to  leave  it  out  of  proportion  ;  I  may  as  well 
eat  the  other  side."  (Laughter.)  "  Every  woman  Quaker 
that  shall  presume  to  come  into  this  jurisdiction  shall  be 
severely  whipped,  and  that  every  Quaker,  he  or  she,  that 
shall  a  third  time  herein  offend,  they  shall  have  their 
tongues  bored  through  with  a  hot  iron." 

These  are  the  Blue  Laws  of  Connecticut.    What  do  you 


206  The  Catholic  Church  in  Ameeica. 

think  now  about  Catholics?  The  game  laws  that  were 
there  instituted  were  very  severe.  They  declared  that  it 
was  not  lawful  for  any  man,  under  forfeit  or  penalty,  to 
shoot  game  of  any  kind.  But  it  was  lawful  for  any  man, 
wherever  he  found  a  priest,  to  shoot  him  at  once.  Their 
treatment  of  the  Indian  was  no  better.  It  was  ordered 
that  it  should  not  be  lawful  for  any  man  to  fire  a  gun  at 
any  kind  of  game  unless  it  be  at  a  wolf  or  an  Indian.  They 
were  strict  men  in  their  way.  (Laughter.)  Here  are  more 
of  their  laws  for  you.  I  will  show  in  what  spirit  they 
were:  " The  court,  taking  notice  of  the  great  abuse  com- 
mitted by  persons  profaning  the  Sabbath  or  Lord's  day, 
ordain  that  if  any  one  do  any  unnecessary  servile  work, 
or  unnecessary  travelling,  or  sports,  or  recreation" — ^for 
example,  if  a  man  play  a  game  of  ball  or  take  a  walk — 
*' he  or  they  that  do  so  transgress  shall  forfeit  for  every 
such  default  the  sum  of  40s.,  or  be  publicly  whipped  ;  fur- 
ther, if  it  clearly  appears  that  this  sin  was  proudly,  pre- 
sumptuously, and  with  a  high  hand  committed  against  the 
known  command  and  authority  of  the  blessed  God,  such 
person  shall  be  put  to  death,  or  punished  at  the  discretion 
of  the  court."  If  a  couple  of  young  men  went  out  to  say 
their  prayers  until  they  were  black  in  the  face — (laughter) 
— and  to  go  into  the  church  and  hear  the  Puritans  "  hum- 
ming and  bumming  over  their  heads,"  and  if  after  that 
they  went  out  to  have  a  game  of  cricket  or  take  a  walk, 
and  they  were  asked  why  they  did  it,  and  one  of  them 
were  to  say  that  they  were  tired  of  all  they  had  heard, 
they  would  be  liable  to  be  put  to  death. 

l^ow,  here  are  more  of  their  laws  :  "  JSTo  one  shall  run 
on  the  Sabbath  day,  or  walk  in  his  garden  or  elsewhere — 
(laughter) — except  reverently  to  and  from  meeting.  No 
one  shall  travel,  cook  victuals,  make  beds,  sweep  house, 
cut  hair,  or  shave  on  the  Sabbath  day."  Why,  on  that 
day,  of  all  others,  a  man  would  like  to  appear  clean  and 
decent."  (Roars  of  laughter.)  "No  woman  shall  kiss 
her  child  on  the  Sabbath  or  fasting  day."  (Laughter.) 
These  States  were  young  colonies,  under  the  protection  of 


Tbe  Catholic  Church  in  America.  207 

Britisb.  law  as  Britisli  colonies.  The  Catholic  religion,  per- 
secuted at  home — both  in  England  and  Ireland — was  per- 
secuted still  more  terribly  in  America.  We  read,  for  in- 
stance, that  in  the  year  1700  the  English  soldiers  who  then 
held  New  York  received  a  commission,  and  on  that  com- 
mission they  massacred  Sebastian  Rasle,  and  his  colleagues 
were  scattered  and  had  to  fly  the  country.  The  same 
legislation  held  throughout,  for  the  States  were  then 
British  colonies.  This  was  about  the  very  last  tyrannical 
act  of  England ;  in  1778,  which  was  a  memorable  year,  the 
American  Revolution  was  then  in  full  swing.  At  that  time 
America  was  up  in  arms.  They  said  :  "No  more  tyranny  ; 
we  must  have  our  own  land  for  ourselves."  (Tremendous 
and  prolonged  cheering.)  The  English  soldiers  in  1778 
were  obliged  to  make  a  speedy  and  inglorious  retreat  from 
New  York.  The  spot  is  still  pointed  out  at  a  place  called 
the  Battery  where  they  hung  a  British  flag  to  the  top  of  a 
flag-staff,  and  they  greased  the  pole  for  fear  any  one  should 
climb  up  to  pull  it  down.  But  there  was  a  little  American 
lad  so  strong  in  his  knees  that  he  was  able  to  climb  the 
pole,  though  it  was  greased,  and  to  pull  it  down  before 
their  ship  was  out  of  sight.     (Laughter.) 

Their  last  act  was  to  take  a  Catholic  priest,  the  Abbe  de 
la  Motte,  a  Frenchman,  and  throw  him  into  prison,  be- 
cause he  was  guilty  of  the  atrocious  crime  of  singing  Mass. 
Well,  my  friends,  as  it  was  in  the  Eastern  States,  so  it  was 
further  south.  The  State  of  Virginia  was  colonized  and 
was  the  stronghold  of  the  Church  of  England,  as  distin- 
guished from  the  Dissenters  or  Nonconformists.  There 
was  a  society  called  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel  in  Foreign  Parts,  and  they  were  so  anxious  for  the 
propagation  of  the  Gospel  that  the  first  thing  they  did  was 
that  if  they  found  a  Catholic  priest  they  thought  they 
would  do  a  holy  and  wholesome  thing  for  God  to  put  him 
into  prison  or  put  him  to  death.  Well,  there  were  some 
Catholics — English  and  Irish — in  that  State.  They  were 
there  in  the  year  1634,  and  amongst  them  there  was  a  noble 
English  family,  the  head  of  which  was  Lord  Baltimore, 


208  Tub  Catholic  Church  in  America, 

witli  an  Irish  title,  derived,  I  think,  from  your  own  country. 
This  man,  finding  his  people  persecuted,  said :  "I  will  not 
stay  here  to  be  persecuted  by  these  vagabonds  ;  there  are 
thousands  of  miles  of  territory  elsewhere,  so  in  the  name 
of  the  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost  let  us  go  somewhere 
else." 

That  year  Lord  Baltimore  landed  on  the  shores  of  the 
Potomac,  in  Maryland,  and  established  the  only  Catholic 
State  in  America.  Land  was  purchased  from  the  natives 
by  Lord  Baltimore,  from  whom  the  city  derives  its  name. 
They  made  their  own  laws  and  constitution,  and  now  for 
the  honor  of  the  holy  Catholic  Church  I  say  that  the  very 
first  law  that  Lord  Baltimore  and  his  fellow-colonists  made 
was :  "In  this  State  of  Maryland  no  man  shall  ever  be  per- 
secuted for  his  religion."  (Cheers.)  And  how  was  this 
constitution  accepted  and  received  ?  0  my  friends !  it  is 
worthy  of  your  earnest  attention.  We  are  told,  on  the 
authority  of  Mr.  Bancroft,  the  great  American  historian, 
that  as  soon  as  this  new  principle  of  religious  toleration 
was  declared  the  people  were  astonished  to  hear  it.  They 
came  there  from  all  the  countries  of  Europe,  and  from 
every  colony  of  America,  that  they  might  breathe  the  air 
of  religious  freedom.     (Applause.) 

These  are  the  words  of  the  historian :  "Emigrants  arrived 
from  every  clime" — (mind,  he  is  a  Protestant  who  speaks) 
— "and  the  Colonial  Legislature  extended  its  sympathies  to 
many  natives  as  well  as  to  many  sects.  From  France  came 
Huguenots — (Protestants  who  were  persecuted  for  their 
religion) — from  Germany,  from  Holland,  from  Sweden, 
from  Ireland  the  children  of  misfortune  sought  protection 
under  the  tolerant  sceptre  of  the  Roman  Catholic.  Bo- 
hemia itself,  the  country  of  Jerome  and  of  IIuss,  sent 
forth  its  sons,  who  at  once  were  made  citizens  of  Maryland, 
with  equal  franchises."  The  Quaker  who  wanted  to  keep 
his  ears,  and  who  did  not  like  the  application  of  a  rod-hot 
iron  to  his  tongue,  came  to  Maryland,  and  under  the  flag 
of  religious  freedom  he  found  peace  and  immunity. 
(Applause.)     Many  Protestants  were    sheltered    against 


The  Catholic  Churcb.  in  America,  209 

Protestant  intolerance  in  the  Roman  Catholic  colony  of 
Maryland. 

Now,  recollect  what  I  am  going  to  tell  you.  They 
came  in  ;  they  were  heartily  welcome  ;  they  multiplied — 
small  blame  to  them  :  they  wanted  to  keep  their  ears — and 
in  a  few  years  they  got  numerous.  We  have  the  evidence 
of  the  great  Protestant  historian,  Bancroft,  that  they  ap- 
plied for  the  protection  of  the  English  law,  and  disfran- 
chised the  Catholics.  I  feci  my  blood  boil  when  I  read  it. 
Lord  Baltimore  died,  and  though  his  sons  continued  his 
policy,  the  ruinous  influence  of  Anglican  institutions  was 
now  to  be  once  more  manifested.  The  powerful  influence 
of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  was  solicited  to  secure  an 
establishment  of  the  Anglican  Church  (the  precious  con- 
cern Mr.  Gladstone  pulled  down),  which  clamored  for  favor 
where  it  already  enjoyed  equality.  Why  was  it  not  satis- 
fied with  equality  %  If  there  are  any  Protestant  ladies  and 
gentlemen  here  to-night,  to  you  I  address  myself.  Why 
were  they  not  satisfied  with  equality 'i?  (Applause.)  If 
they  had  the  truth,  what  does  the  truth  ask  but  a  fair  field 
and  no  favor?  (Applause.)  " The  prelates  demanded  not 
freedom  but  privilege,  an  establishment  to  be  maintained 
at  the  common  expense  of  the  Catholic  province.  The 
English  Ministry  soon  issued  an  order  that  offices  of  the 
government  in  Maryland  should  be  entrusted  exclusively 
to  Protestants.  Roman  Catholics  were  disfranchised  in 
the  province  which  they  had  planted."  (Groans.)  It  is 
unnecessary  I  should  dwell  upon  this  thing  to  create  bad 
feelings.  I  am  ashamed  of  it,  and  so  is  every  right-minded 
Protestant  in  the  world.  Meantime,  how  fared  it  with  the 
Catholics?  The  Catholics,  my  friends,  were  few  in  the 
land — few  and  far  between — ^here  and  there.  Five  or  six 
Highlandmen  from  Scotland  of  the  old  class  that  kept  the 
ancient  faith,  the  Irish  family  driven  by  persecution,  or  by 
some  strange  impulse,  or  by  some  venturesome  spirit,  or 
tired  of  fighting  in  a  hopeless  cause,  would  "go  to  America, 
and,  bringing  their  Catholic  faith  with  them,  would  remain 
in  the  wild  forests,  hewing  the  primeval  trees,  ploughing 


;:^- 


210  Tre  Catholic  Church  in  America, 

the  virgin  soil,  hunting  the  elk,  destroying  the  wild  beasts, 
making  a  little  civilization,  but  sighing  in  vain  for  the  sign 
of  the  cross  or  for  the  visit  of  the  priest.  (Applause.) 
The  poor  Catholic  baptized  his  own  children,  assembled 
them  at  night  to  say  the  rosary,  taught  them,  when  he 
might,  their  Catechism;  but  beyond  this  there  was  no 
aid  whatever,  no  help  whatever,  from  that  religion  which 
he  knew  and  believed  to  be  the  only  true  revelation  of  God, 
and  with  which  he  believed  all  his  hopes  for  time  and  eter- 
nity were  bound.  (Applause.)  Occasionally  a  Spanish 
priest  from  South  America,  from  the  Southern  States, 
might  venture  into  the  northern  wilds  and  forests.  Occa- 
sionally the  poor  Irish  emigrant,  the  poor  Irish  Catholic, 
might  see  at  early  morning  a  little  canoe  coming  down 
along  the  solitary  stream,  and  as  he  strained  his  eyes  for 
a  time  he  might  see  upon  the  very  top  of  the  mast  of  the 
frail  boat  something  like  the  sign  of  the  cross — some  French 
Jesuit  or  some  Dominican  priest,  committing  his  life  and 
his  all,  going  down  the  Ohio,  the  Missouri,  or  the  Missis- 
sippi in  search  of  souls.  (Loud  applause.)  Then  great 
was  the  joy  when  the  man  of  God  arrived,  and  when,  per- 
haps for  the  first  time  for  twenty  years,  the  Catholic,  with 
his  children  around  him,  was  able  to  kneel  down  at  the 
Holy  Sacrifice  and  adore  his  God.     (Applause.) 

I  need  not  tell  j^ou  that  in  the  year  177G  the  American 
Revolution  broke  out.  The  British  soldiers  were  defeated, 
the  flag  of  England  disappeared  from  off  the  ports  and 
cities,  whilst  all  America  and  the  world  beheld  for  the 
first  time  that  which  I  for  one  honor  and  revere,  the  glo- 
rious "  Stars  and  Stripes."  (Loud  and  prolonged  applause.) 
You  will  not  be  surprised  to  hear  that  when  this  glorious 
event  was  accomplished,  in  the  process  of  which  the  blood 
of  Irishmen  was  shed  freely,  that  the  immortal  George 
Washington,  well,  indeed,  and  proudly,  avowed  that  the 
strongest  force  at  his  right  arm  was  the  patriotism  and 
courage  of  the  Irishman.  (Loud  applause.)  Yet  in  that 
day  there  was  not  a  single  priest  in  the  whole  State  or  city 
of  New  York.    The  first  priest  that  settled  in  the  city  of 


The  Catholic  Church  in  America.  311 

New  York  was  Father  Francis  Whelan,  an  Irish  Francis- 
can, who  came  there  in  1785,  and  his  congregation  amount- 
ed at  that  time  to  about  two  hundred  Catholics  in  the  city. 
Further  on,  in  1808,  there  were  only  one  bishop  and  one 
diocese  in  the  whole  of  the  United  States  of  America  ; 
that  was  the  Bishop  of  Baltimore.  It  seems  to  us  as  it 
were  a  thing  of  yesterday,  our  idea  of  antiquity  carrying 
us  back  to  the  middle  ages.  And  in  America  they  con- 
sider themselves  old  when  we  in  Ireland  are  what  we  call 
robust  men.  I  knew  myself  that  I  was  not  a  bad-looking 
man,  but  I  was  called  the  old  gentleman  frequently. 
(Laughter.)  I  do  not  mean  old  Harry  or  old  Nick,  you  know, 
but  the  old  gentleman.  (Renewed  laughter.)  In  1808  there 
was  only  one  bishop  in  America,  and  in  1815 — the  other  day 
we  say  ;  our  fathers  remember  it — the  first  cathedral  was 
constructed  by  Bishop  Chevereux  of  Boston.  Dr.  Con- 
nolly, a  Dominican,  was  appointed  Bishop  of  New  York 
in  1822.  Many  men  here  may  have  some  recollection  of 
that  year.  In  that  year  there  were  only  eight  priests  in 
the  whole  diocese  of  New  York.  Do  you  know  what  the 
diocese  of  New  York  meant  at  that  time?  It  meant 
the  whole  of  New  York,  New  Jersey,  and  Long  Island, 
which  then  comprised  Brooklyn,  Albany,  Rochester,  Buf- 
falo, and  Newark,  and  in  the  year  1822  there  were  only 
eight  priests  there.  California  at  that  time  was  scarcely 
known.  Some  Spanish  friars  had  formed  the  people  into 
societies,  taught  them  agriculture,  and  made  them  a  hap- 
py people,  and  everything  went  on  well  until  the  year 
1813 — so  far  up  to  our  own  time.  We  find  that  ninety- 
five  years  ago  there  were  thirteen  States  ;  now  there  are 
thirty-eight.  Eighty- one  years  ago  there  was  but  one 
bishop  in  America.  Seventy  years  ago — sixty  years  ago 
there  were  but  four  bishops  in  America ;  now  there  are 
fifty-seven.  (Loud  applause.)  The  population  of  America 
at  the  time  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  two 
millions  eight  hundred  thousand  ;  now  there  are  over  forty 
millions.     (Applause.) 

In  that  population  did  the  Catholics  keep  up  with  that 


212  The  Catholic  Church  in  America. 

immense  increase  of  population  ?  The  increase  in  the  popu- 
lation was  fourteen  hundred  and  thirtj-three  per  cent.  The 
Catholics  at  the  time  were  enumerated  at  twenty-five  thou- 
sand in  America.  To-day  John  Francis  Maguire,  whose 
authority  I  accept,  declares  that  it  is  a  small  estimate  to 
say  that  the  Catholics  in  the  United  States  number  nine 
millions.  (Loud  applause.)  That  is  to  say,  more  than 
thirty-three  thousand  per  cent.,  whereas  the  increase  in 
the  States  in  the  main  is  fourteen  hundred  and  thirty- 
three  per  cent.  Some  of  the  statistics  of  the  diocese  will 
give  you  some  more  accurate  idea  of  these  things.  In 
1786  there  was  but  one  chapel  and  two  hundred  Catholics  ; 
now,  at  the  present  day,  there  are  at  least  one  hundred  and 
fifty -five  churches  in  New  York,  and  two  hundred  and  fifty 
priests  on  the  mission.  (Applause.)  In  1822  there  were 
only  eight  priests  in  New  York  and  seventeen  thousand 
Catholics  in  the  whole  diocese  of  New  York.  In  1847  the 
diocese  of  Albany,  a  mere  slice  of  New  York,  was  cut  off, 
and  in  that  diocese  alone  there  are  one  hundred  and  seven- 
ty priests,  tliree  hundred  and  eight  churches  and  chapels, 
and  a  Catholic  population  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand. In  1822  there  were  but  seventeen  thousand  Catholics 
and  but  eight  priests  in  the  whole  State.  In  1847  Buffalo 
was  cut  off  from  it,  and  two  years  ago  there  were  one  hun- 
dred and  ten  priests  there  and  one  hundred  and  fourteen 
churches  and  chapels.  (Applause.)  In  the  city  of  Brook- 
lyn there  was  but  one  priest  twenty -five  years  ago,  and 
now  it  contains,  besides  its  cathedral,  twenty-five  Catholic 
churches  and  twelve  thousand  children  attending  daily  for 
education  at  the  Catholic  schools.    (Loud  applause.) 

I  need  not  go  into  the  details  with  you,  my  friends,  for 
it  is  quite  unnecessary.  One  or  two  facts  such  as  these 
give  you  an  idea  of  the  contrast  between  the  America  of 
to-day  and  what  it  was  so  few  years  ago.  I  wish  now  to 
direct  your  attention  to  a  few  remarks  I  have  to  make.  In 
1834  there  was  in  Milwaukee,  in  the  State  of  Wisconsin, 
but  a  single  white  mnn.  The  place  belonged  to  the  red 
Indian.    Three  years  later  an  Irish  priest,  and  true  man, 


The  (Jateolic  Church  in  America.  213 

Father  Kelly,  came  there,  with  perhaps  only  one  man  for 
his  congregation,  so  that  he  could  address  him  as  Dean 
Swift  used  to  address  his  clerk — "  Dearly  beloved  Roger." 
(Loud  laughter.)  Two  years  later,  in  1839,  there  was  one 
church  in  Milwaukee ;  one  year  later,  in  1840,  there  were 
two  thousand  Catholics  ;  in  1844,  twenty  thousand  Catho- 
lics ;  and  in  1868,  five  years  ago,  there  were  three  hundred 
and  twenty-two  churches,  sixteen  chapels,  seventy-five 
stations,  and  four  hundred  thousand  Grerman  and  Irish 
Catholics.    (Applause.) 

This  was  indeed  a  miraculous  growth.  Measure  it  by 
the  growth  of  some  of  the  religious  orders.  Take,  for  in- 
stance, the  Order  of  Notre  Dame,  of  which  order  there  are 
two  ladies  here  at  present  looking  for  subjects  among  the 
faithful  and  grand  maidenhood  of  Ireland.  I  was  speak- 
ing to  one  of  them,  and  she  told  me  she  was  reaping  a  rich 
harvest,  as  I  told  her  she  would  be  sure  to  do  amongst  the 
faithful,  pure,  and  grand  maidenhood  of  the  country. 
(Applause.)  Sixteen  years  ago  there  was  but  one  convent 
of  that  order  founded  in  America ;  now  there  are  fifty- 
eight  convents  and  five  hundred  sisters.  In  1847  Dr.  Timon 
was  consecrated  Bishop  of  Buffalo,  and  at  that  time  there 
were  but  sixteen  churches  (mere  shanties)  there,  and  sixteen 
priests.  Twenty  years  later  that  bishop  died,  and  before 
he  died  he  left  one  hundred  and  sixty-five  grand  churches 
and  one  hundred  and  twenty-six  priests  on  the  mission  in 
his  diocese.  (Applause.)  These  facts  alone  suffice  ;  now 
let  us  look  for  the  explanation.  How  came  this  won- 
derful growth  ?  How  came  it  to  pass  that  the  Catholic 
Church,  as  if  she  were  only  founded  forty  years  ago,  and 
as  if  she  had  the  twelve  apostles  bestowing  on  her  the 
blessing  of  God,  produced  such  a  miraculous  growth  as 
this  ?  We  don't  expect  such  a  growth  from  this  old  tree, 
nearly  two  thousand  years  old,  from  which  so  many  fair 
branches  have  been  lopped  off,  dried  up,  and  cast  away. 
How  comes  it  that  this  old  Church  is  able  to  put  forth  her 
branches,  to  overspread  a  mighty  continent,  and  out  of 
twenty-five  thousand  to  produce  in  an  inconceivably  short 


214  The  Catholic  Church  in  America, 

time,  within  the  span  of  one  man's  memory,  nearly  ten  mil- 
lions of  souls  \  (Loud  applause.)  It  is  a  great  problem, 
my  friends,  and  one  well  worthy  of  consideration.  It  is 
wortliy  of  our  consideration  as  a  human  fact.  We  have 
data  and  evidence  for  it  that,  whilst  the  Catholic  Church 
has  been  growing  in  this  way,  like  nnto  the  tree  planted 
by  the  running  waters,  every  other  religious  institution, 
sect,  or  whatever  you  may  call  it,  has  been  decaying  and 
losing  its  hold  upon  the  minds  and  hearts  of  the  Americans. 
(Applause.) 

I  speak  thus  upon  the  evidence  of  Americans  and  Pro- 
testants. One  writer  says  :  "  The  growth  of  Popery  is  sim- 
ply prodigious."  When  in  Boston  I  asked  what  was  the 
proportion  the  Catholics  bore  to  the  entire  population  in  a 
city  where,  when  a  learned  Catholic  bishop  visited  the  place 
after  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  it  was  said  to  him  : 
";N"ow  we  know  you  are  not  the  devil,  though  when  first 
you  came  we  would  cross  the  street  and  go  out  of  your 
path,  so  that  we  might  not  breathe  the  same  air  with  a 
Catholic."  (Laughter  and  applause).  To-day,  in  the  cen- 
tre of  the  mind  and  intelligence  of  America,  the  majority 
of  the  population  is  Catholic  and  mostly  Irish.  (Loud  ap- 
plause.) I  lectured  there  myself,  and  Mr.  Patrick  Do- 
nahoe,  the  able  editor  of  the  Boston  Pilots  brought  thirty- 
five  thousand  people  to  hear  me.  View  it  humanly,  it  is 
an  astonishing  fact ;  but,  beyond  this,  it  is  a  supernatural 
fact.  He  who  founded  that  religion  and  that  Church  de- 
clared that  His  Church  and  His  kingdom  were  like  unto  the 
mustard-seed,  which  falls  into  the  soil  the  least  of  seeds, 
but  when  it  grows  up  a  mighty  tree,  and  extends  its 
branches  hither  and  tliither,  all  the  birds  of  the  air  find 
their  nests  there.  (Applause.)  It  is  a  supernatural  fact  in 
this  :  no  religion  demands  from  those  who  profess  it  such 
sacrifices  as  Catholicity.  Catholicity  at  the  hands  of  you, 
my  friends,  demands  sacrifices  intellectual  and  physical. 

As  an  intellectual  sacrifice.  Catholicity  demands  tliat  you 
bow  down  your  intelligence  with  humility  before  the  eye 
of  faith  and  worship  God  who  was  crucified.     Oh  I  how 


Ths  Catholic  Chubch  in  America,  215 

offcen  have  I  found  during  my  career  in  America  men  who 
would  say  to  me  :  "  Give  me  leave  to  reason  the  thing  out 
until  I  come  to  a  conclusion  founded  on  human  reason." 
But  we  must  not  look  to  human  reason  for  a  solution  of 
tlds  problem.  As  well  might  we  doubt  the  existence  of 
stars  in  the  heavens  which  are  not  visible  to  the  naked  eye. 
It  would  be  folly  to  look  for  those  stars  with  the  naked 
eye,  but  if  we  take  a  telescope  they  come  out  upon  our 
vision.  And  so  it  is  with  those  truths  which  are  far,  far 
removed  from  the  mere  ken  of  human  reason,  far  beyond 
the  scope  of  human  argument.  God  has  furnished  the 
telescope  of  divine  faith,  which  will  remove  the  cloud  which 
veils  the  eyes  of  the  infidel  and  will  disclose  to  his  vision 
the  glorious  and  golden  truths  of  God's  revelation.  (Ap- 
plause.) Catholicity  imposes  physical  sacrifices.  There  is 
none  of  us  who  does  not  think  that  a  beefsteak  is  more 
pleasing  than  a  salt  herring.  (Laughter.)  There  are  a 
good  many  days  in  the  year  when  you  and  I  have  to  be 
content  to  eat  a  bit  of  fish  when  we  would  like  a  bit  of 
meat.  (Laughter.)  Catholicity  imposes  sacrifices  greater 
still.  It  obliges  the  proud  man  to  go  to  confession.  There 
is  the  sacrifice  of  sacrifices  !  There  is  the  grandeur  of  the 
Catholic  faith  I  God  has  thrown  the  omnipotence  of  his 
mercy  into  a  commission  given  to  the  priest,  who  tells  the 
proudest  man  to  bow  down  and  humble  himself  before  that 
omnipotent  power  wielded  by  man.     (Applause.) 

I  met  a  gentleman  in  America  who  told  me,  I  believe, 
all  he  had  to  tell  me  of  his  life.  ' '  Sir, ' '  he  said,  ' '  I  am  tell- 
ing you  everything,  but  I  am  telling  it  to  you  as  a  friend  ; 
for  I  could  not,  if  I  were  to  die  for  it,  demean  myself  to 
do  so  as  a  poor  penitent,  believing  you  could  do  everything 
for  me."  And  yet  Catholicity  imposes  that  upon  us  ;  and 
how  could  you  account  for  it  except  by  the  supernatural 
reason  that  religion  was  clearly  defined  in  the  humiliation 
of  the  mind  and  heart,  and  the  humiliation  of  the  body  to 
accept  as  law  such  religious  privations  ?  (Applause.)  The 
explanation  is,  first,  by  the  reason  I  have  given — it  is  the 
work  of  God ;  secondly,  the  United  States  of  America  have 


21^6  ^BE  Catholic  Church  in  America. 

received  tlie  superabundant  population  of  the  older  coun- 
tries. The  energy,  physical  and  intellectual,  which  found 
no  vent  in  Europe  has  found  spacious  room  for  its  exercise 
in  the  vast  continent  of  America.  And,  above  all,  America 
was  intended,  I  believe,  by  the  Almighty  God  to  be  the 
home  of  the  hunted  and  the  refuge  of  the  persecuted,  and 
to  open  her  arms  and  take  to  her  bosom  a  race  the  most 
faithful,  the  most  gifted,  though  the  most  down-trodden 
of  the  people  of  the  earth.  (Loud  applause.)  They 
turned  their  eyes  towards  the  West ;  they  turned  their 
backs  to  the  pauper's  grave  ;  they  heard  the  rattling  of  the 
chains  that  hung  upon  their  fathers  for  ages ;  they  fled  to 
the  West,  and  brought  to  the  glorious  Columbia  that 
wealth  of  Irish  blood,  of  Irish  brains,  and  Irish  heart,  but 
above  all,  and  beyond  all,  that  grand  principle  which  is 
the  only  unifying  and  uniting  principle  of  our  race  for 
ages — that  of  their  Catholic  faith.  (Loud  and  prolonged 
applause.)  Those  have  crossed  the  sea  in  thousands — ay, 
I  will  say  in  millions.  They  crossed  the  sea,  and  soon  the 
generous  hand  of  Columbia  wiped  away  the  tears  from  the 
exiles'  eyes.  They  consented,  for  the  sake  of  the  land  of 
their  adoption,  and  for  their  own  temporal  interests,  to  con- 
fine her  rivers,  to  cut  down  her  mountains  and  fill  up  her 
valleys,  to  build  her  cities,  to  cover  her  with  that  won- 
derful network  of  railways  which  places  her  in  advance  of 
the  whole  world ;  they  consented  to  fight  in  her  armies, 
until  the  soil  of  America  is  reddened  with  Irish  blood, 
shed  on  many  a  glorious  battle-field,  almost  as  much  as 
the  old  land  itself  is  reddened  with  the  blood  shed  in  mar- 
tyrdom. They  consented  to  do  all  this,  and  they  did  it 
well;  but  they  demanded  from  Columbia  in  return  one 
privilege — to  proclaim  the  Catholic  faith  and  uphold  Ca- 
tholic doctrine,  and  to  cover  the  glorious  land  with  the 
grandest  churches  and  the  most  magnificent  evidences  of 
Catholicity  that  the  world  beholds  to-day.     (Applause.) 

I  do  not  deny  that  this  great  increase  in  Catholicity  is 
due  also  to  another  great  element  in  American  emigi'ation 
— ^the  Germans.    From  the  Catholic  states  of  Southern 


The  Catholic  Church  in  America^  ill 

Germany  they  also  came  in  their  hundreds  and  hundreds 
of  thousands  ;  they  brought  with  them  faith — a  quiet  faith. 
I  have  observed  it  carefully  and  lovingly — a  quiet  zeal  for 
their  own  sanctification,  a  great  zeal  for  the  Catholic  edu- 
cation of  their  children.  Everywhere,  wherever  the  Ger- 
man community  is  found,  do  you  find  good  churches  and 
schools ;  but  when  they  have  built  their  church  and  se- 
cured the  ministrations  of  a  priest  they  sit  down  and  en- 
joy their  religion.  But  the  Irishman  builds  not  for  himself 
alone  ;  he  will  not  content  himself  with  building  a  church 
for  Irish  Catholics,  but  will  devote  haK  his  day' s  earnings 
to  build  a  big  cathedral  for  all  Catholics  ;  his  Irish  heart 
takes  them  all  in.  (Loud  cheers.)  The  Irishman,  restless 
himself,  perhaps,  still  will  not  leave  the  place  where  he  has 
earned  a  dollar  until  he  puts  half  that  dollar  into  the  soil, 
in  the  shape  of  some  glorious  evidence  that  the  Irish  Ca- 
tholic hand  was  there.  (Applause.)  The  German  will 
enjoy  his  religion,  but  will  not  fight  for  it;  Paddy  will  stick 
up  for  his  religion,  and  Paddy  will  fight  for  it.  ("  Bravo  !' ' ) 
And  it  would  be  a  strange  thing  indeed  if  a  race  that  is 
said  to  be  so  disposed  for  fighting  that  they  will  fight  for 
the  fun  of  the  thing — (laughter) — it  would  be  a  strange 
thing  if  they  would  not  fight  when  it  was  a  question  of 
God  and  His  holy  religion  that  was  at  issue.  (Hear,  hear.) 
I  was  travelling  in  Kentucky,  and  there  were  four  young 
gentlemen,  with  more  fun  than  good  sense  in  their  tem- 
peraments, came  into  the  carriage.  It  was  the  only  time  I 
received  the  slightest  indignity  while  I  was  in  America. 
These  young  gentlemen  seemed  to  be  coming  home  from 
school — four  strapping  young  fellows.  At  any  rate,  they 
commenced  chaffing  the  poor  priest.  Well,  I  had  met  with 
so  much  of  that  kind  of  thing  in  England  that  I  didn't  mind 
a  bit.  But  when  we  pulled  up  at  the  station  a  man  ap- 
peared at  the  door  of  the  carriage — a  tremendously  big 
'King's  County  man,  looming  up  like  Finn  McCoul. 
(Cheers  and  laughter.)  He  walked  in.  Those  fonr  gentle- 
men hushed  up,  and  one  of  them  said  in  a  whisper  that  I 
}ieard :  "  I  guess  that's  an  Irish  chap.    We  had  better  shut 


218  The  Catholic  Church  i?r  America, 

Tip."  (Great  laughter.)  And  so  well  they  might,  for 
after  they  departed,  and  I  told  my  Irish  friend,  he  put  out 
a  gross  exclamation:  "Be  the  mortial,"  said  he,  "it"  I 
knew  that" — (loud  laughter,  which  was  increased  by 
Father  Burke's  pantomime) — "I  would  not  leave  as  much 
clothes  on  the  vagabonds  as  would  make  a  mop  to  swab 
the  carriage,  and  I'd  break  their  necks  in  the  bargain." 
(Applause  and  laughter.) 

The  third  reason  to  which  I  attribute  this  extraordinary 
spread  of  Catholicity  in  America  is  a  certain  attribute  of 
the  native  American  mind  of  which  I  am  very  anxious  to 
epeak,  for  I  feel  very  intensely  about  it.     Strictly  speak- 
ing, we  must  draw  a  broad  line  between  the  British  colo- 
nial America  which  ceased  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution 
and  the  new  and  glorious  States  which  sprang  into  ex- 
istence from  that  period.      The  British  colonies,  as  they 
were  called,  were  legislated  for  by  the  home  country  ;  they 
got  their  laws  from  London,  and  these  laws  were  impreg- 
nated with  the  spirit  of  religious  bigotry  and  intolerance, 
and  the  statute-books  were  stained  with  Catholic  blood. 
The  moment  that  America  dashed  to  the  gi-ound  that  un- 
worthy banner  and  raised  up  the  banner  of  her  own  free- 
dom she  had  the  generosity  to  blot  out  all  recollections  of 
the  past  by  splendid  legislation,  and  declared  the  great  prin- 
ciple of  religious  liberty.     (Cheers.)    The  consequence  was 
that  the  American  of  to-day — that  highly-intellectual,  that 
grandly-gifted  American  mind  of  to-day — is  not  a  bit  agree- 
able to  the  more  ancient  opinions  and  traditions  of  persecu- 
tion. They  are  free  from  them,  as,  more  than  once,  gentlemen 
in  America  boasted  to  me :  *'  Father,  you  must  acknowledge 
our  hands  are  free  from  blood."    The  consequence  of  this 
is  a  certain  largeness  of  mind,  a  freedom  from  prejudice,  a 
certain  willingness  to  consider  fairly  the  great  truths  of 
revelation,  a  certain  logical  acumen  which  keenly  and 
logically  perceives  the  truth.    Kotliing  struck  me  more 
than  this— the  clear,  unprejudiced  habit  of  mind  I  discov- 
ered amongst  Americans.    I  will  give  you  a  case  in  point. 
I  was  called,  during  my  stay  in  America,  to  visit  a  gentle- 


The  Cateolio  Church  in  America,  219 

man  who  was  sick.  He  was  a  lawyer  of  eminence  in  the 
Southern  States — aU  the  best  families  are  in  the  Southern 
States — and  a  man  very  highly  connected.  He  was  a  man, 
too,  who  had  travelled  in  Europe  and  had  read  a  good 
deal.  I  went  to  him  and  found  him  with  all  his  senses 
perfectly  clear,  and  I  spoke  to  him  on  religious  truths. 
The  man  looked  at  me.  After  a  time  I  felt  the  moment 
was  come  ;  I  concluded  my  arguments ;  I  rose  from  the 
place  where  I  was  sitting  at  the  bedside,  and  said :  "  My 
friend,  you  are  dying ;  it  is  necessary  in  order  to  please 
God  to  have  some  specific  form  of  religious  belief.  You 
have  heard  my  arguments ;  I  command  you  now,  in  the 
name  of  the  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  to  ask  to  be  re- 
ceived into  the  Catholic  Church,  and  to  consent  to  receive 
the  sacraments  at  my  hands."  The  moment  I  put  it  to 
him  the  man  complied,  and  before  I  left  the  room  he  was 
a  Catliolic.     (Loud  applause.) 

And  now,  my  friends,  such  is  the  present  of  America — 
a  glorious  Church,  united  like  one  man.  The  episcopacjf, 
the  priesthood,  and  the  Catholic  laity  in  America  are  the 
most  united  of  any  branch  of  the  holy  Catholic  Church, 
for  they  have  less  dissension  or  appearance  of  diversity  of 
opinion  amongst  them.  Obedience  to  the  holy  Church  of 
God  ;  love  for  the  Church' s  head  and  centre,  the  Pope  of 
Rome ;  rational  yet  most  loving  obedience  to  every  man- 
date of  the  head  of  the  Church,  and  docile  submission  to 
every  enunciation  of  the  Church,  their  mother — these  are 
received  and  acted  upon  as  matters  of  course  in  America. 
It  is  the  most  glorious  in  its  unity  of  all  the  nations  that 
have  embraced  the  truth  and  the  cross  of  Jesus  Christ. 
(Cheers.)  A  glorious  Church,  numbering  to-day  fully  one- 
fourth  of  the  population  of  the  United  States,  destined  to 
grow  with  that  mighty,  growing  country,  destined  to 
leaven  that  country  with  truth.  For  of  all  the  converts  to 
Catholicity  I  have  ever  met — and  I  have  encountered  many 
of  different  nationalities — the  most  intellectual,  the  most 
fervent,  the  most  simple-minded  and  religious  are  the  con- 
verts made  to  Catholicity  from  the  worst  forms  of  New 


■• 
•« 


220  The  Catholic  Church  in  America. 

England  Puritanism.  (Applause.)  They  brought  all  the 
energy  of  their  Pilgrim  forefathers  with  them  into  tha 
Church  of  God ;  they  brought  their  dogged  Anglo-Saxon 
♦determination  that,  having  seen  the  truth,  they  shall  stand 
by  it  to  the  end,  and  they  will  fight  for  it,  and,  if  neces- 
sary, die  for  it.  (Cheers.)  These  converts  are  multiplying 
every  year.  The  shrewd,  keen  intelligence  of  America 
has  an  insight  into  the  truth  far  keener  than  those  nations 
whose  youth  and  childhood  have  been  nurtured  upon  the 
traditions  of  bigotry  and  intolerance.  Those  converts  are 
multiplying.  Protestantism  is  rapidly  disappearing  out  of 
the  haunts  of  Puritanism.  In  Massachusetts  itself  Catho- 
licity has  made  such  advances  that  one  statesman  of  Ame- 
rica said,  a  few  years  ago :  "In  twenty-five  years  I  believe 
that  the  great  masses  of  our  population  will  be  Roman 
Catholic."  (Cheers.)  I  believe  it  for  two  reasons.  One  is 
a  supernatural,  the  other  a  natural,  reason.  I  believe  it 
for  a  supernatural  reason.  The  Church  is  the  salvation  of 
the  world.  Every  Catholic  believes  it ;  every  Catholic 
must  believe  it.  If  I  did  not  believe  that  her  mission  was 
to  save  the  world,  to  save  society — the  human  as  well  as 
divine  society  of  her  own  children — I  would  not  remain  a 
Catholic.    (Cheers.) 

The  American  mind — coming  to  the  natural  argument — 
is  beginning  to  recognize  this  fact.  They  see  clearly  and 
distinctly  that  it  is  necessary  for  the  salvation  of  American 
society  that  the  sanctity  of  the  Christian  family  should  be 
preserved.  They  see  it  is  necessary  the  Christian  wife 
should  be  the  queen  of  her  Christian  household ;  that 
there  should  be  no  power  on  earth  or  in  hell  able  to  sever 
the  sacred  bond  that  God  himself  seals — the  sacramental 
bond  of  matrimony.  They  see  that  the  purity  and  integ- 
rity of  the  children  depend  upon  the  fidelity  of  the  hus- 
band and  wife ;  and  therefore  they  begin  to  see  every  day 
more  and  more  clearly  that  that  religion  alone  can  save 
them  which  sanctifies  their  union,  which  stamps  upon  the 
man  and  woman  the  saci-amental  seal  which  represents  the 
fidelity  of  Jesus  Christ  to  His  Church.    (Loud  applause.) 


The  Catholic  Church  in  America.  321 

jpefore  leaving  America  one  of  the  things  I  received  was 
a  Dook  from  a  distinguished  Protestant  clergyman.  It  was 
a  book  written  against  the  principle  of  divorce,  and  it  was 
written  in  as  sound  a  spirit  as  if  a  Catholic  priest  wrote  it, 
and  with  as  firm  and  impressive  and  as  eager  an  eloquence 
as  if  the  best  Irishman  that  ever  put  pen  to  paper  was  the 
author  of  it.  (Hear,  hear.)  In  that  book  he  lays  down 
as  a  principle  that  until  the  law  of  divorce  is  utterly  ig- 
nored and  abolished  there  can  be  no  safety  for  society  in 
America.  Tlie  keen  American  people,  who  love  their 
family  ties,  and  no  people  love  them  more  dearly— that 
excellent  people,  leavened  with  much  that  is  excellent  in 
the  various  nations  that  supply  the  elements  of  its  popula- 
tion— the  American  people,  who  love  strongly  and  ten- 
derly, are  beginning  to  see  more  and  more  that  between 
the  lawlessness  of  the  border  nations  and  the  rites  and  in- 
telligence of  Mohammedanism — that  between  the  strange 
practices  of  this  sect  and  that,  all  flowing  In  upon  and  in- 
tended ultimately  to  destroy  them,  there  is  only  one  great 
bulwark  to  defend  them,  only  one  capable  of  standing  be- 
tween them  and  all  that  abomination,  only  one  power 
that  can  exorcise  that  demon  that  would  destroy  society, 
and  that  one  power  is  the  holy  Roman  Catholic  Church. 
(Great  aj)plause.)  America  to-day  groans  and  laments  by 
the  voices  of  her  statesmen,  her  philosophers,  her  vmters, 
and  her  press  over  the  awful  corruption  of  official  life,  the 
awful  corruption  of  commercial  life,  and  the  dishonesty 
which  they  publicly  proclaim  is  found  in  every  order  of 
commercial,  social,  and  political  life.  Nothing  impressed 
me  more  than  this — the  universal  lament,  day  after  day,  in 
all  the  papers  in  America. 

Thus  we  read  that  a  man  absconded,  having  made  his 
*'pile" — ^for  they  have  their  special  names  by  which  to 
designate  those  operations.  Another  man  absconded,  hav- 
ing executed  a  tremendous  "job,"  and  taken  a  couple  of 
millions  of  dollars  from  the  public.  Now  a  man  is  brought 
to  bay  until  he  is  made  to  disgorge  sums  of  almost  fabu- 
lous extent — eight,  ten,  ox  twelve  millions  of  dollars  ;  and 


222  Tee  Catholic  Church  in  America, 

now  some  great  company  is  "burst  up,"  to  use  another 
American  plirase,  through  the  dishonesty  and  fraudulent 
conduct  of  two  or  three  of  its  head  men,  and  so  on.  Men 
see  all  these  facts.  Over  and  over  again  I  have  preached, 
and  lectured,  and  spoken  to  American  audiences  on  this 
great  truth.  "Grentlemen,"  I  have  said,  "there  is  only 
one  religion  that  can  save  you ;  that  is  the  religion  that 
begins  by  making  men  honest,  through  sacramental  grace ; 
and  if  they  are  not  honest,  it  is  the  only  one  that  knows 
how  to  punish  the  thief  by  making  him  make  restitution. 
(Cheers.)  Prevent  a  man  from  stealing  if  you  can ;  but  if 
you  cannot,  the  worst  infliction  you  can  impose  upon  him 
is  to  take  him  by  the  throat  and  say  :  *  Make  restitution 
of  all  you  have,  or  down  to  hell  you  go.'  (Great  ap- 
plause.) The  Catholic  Church  alone  can  say  this."  Here 
it  is  that  the  true,  shrewd  mind  of  America  sees  the  im- 
mense advantage  Catholicity  offers  over  those  shams.  For 
it  is  only  a  sham  and  a  humbug  the  religion  that  is  for  ever 
crying:  "Lord,  Lord!";  that  invokes  the  holy  name 
with  blasphemous  familiarity  ;  that  is  constantly  spouting 
texts  from  the  Old  Testament,  and  is  always  parading  be- 
fore you  the  sayings  of  this  prophet  or  of  that  lawgiver ; 
that  is  ever  flattering  men  and  laying  the  flattering  unction 
to  their  souls  tliat  they  have  found  the  true  way  to  happi- 
ness when  they  learn  to  believe  and  "lean  upon  the  Lord." 
(Cheers  and  laughter.)  Well,  my  friend  the  commissioner 
or  my  friend  the  road  contractor  may  "lean  upon  the 
Lord,"  but  yon  may  be  sure  he  will  bring  an  addition  to 
his  own  weight  in  the  shape  of  a  bag  containing  a  couple 
of  million  dollars.     (Great  laughter.) 

My  friends,  one  word  and  I  have  done.  I  believe  I  can 
afford  to  wait,  for  I  believe  if  God  give  me  the  ordinary 
term  of  human  life  I  shall  live  to  behold  Catholic  America 
—a  great  nation  clothed  in  all  the  grandeur  and  strength 
and  pride  of  the  holy  Church  of  God.  (Loud  cheers.)  It 
is  said  that  when  the  Son  of  God  was  on  the  cross  His 
dying  face  was  turned  towards  the  West.  I  know  not  if 
the  circumstance  be  so,  but  it  seems  as  if  it  were.    The  tide 


The  Catholic  Church  m  America,  223 

of  sanctity  and  divine  faith  receded  many  ages  ago  from 
tile  very  hills  that  vv^itnessed  His  crucilixion.  The  ap- 
I)roaching  tide  of  barbarism,  Mohammedanism,  and  infideli- 
ty swei3t  in,  and  every  vestige  of  the  Church  of  God  was 
obliterated  there.  We  have  seen  that  tide  sweeping  on 
from  Jerusalem  to  Ephesus,  from  Ephesus  to  Constantino- 
ple, proceeding  westward  still,  finding  strength  in  Rome  ; 
and  from  Rome  the  tide  of  sanctity,  retained  by  her,  still 
swept  westward,  westward  still,  until  in  a  far-distant 
western  isle,  the  island  of  saints,  of  monks,  and  of  apos- 
tles, the  glory  of  Christendom,  the  grandeur  of  Catholic 
sanctity  burst  out  even  upon  Christian  nations  as  a  still 
brighter  light,  and  all  the  world  praised  God  in  Ireland. 
(Great  applause.)  The  surging  waves  of  infidelity  are  to- 
day lasliing  with  angry  roar  the  very  foundations  of  the 
seven  hills  of  Rome ;  but  westward  still  flows  the  tide  of 
sanctity,  growing  and  increasing  in  the  light  of  divine 
faith ;  and  to-day  the  whole  world  gazes  upon  the  portent 
of  American  Catholicity,  and  glorifies  God  through  the 
means  of  faith  for  that  which  no  human  reason  can  ac- 
count for  or  understand.     (Immense  applause.) 

I  met  old  priests  in  America — old  men  who  in  their  first 
days  of  missionary  priesthood  were  obliged  to  lie  down  in 
the  snow,  and  were  forced  to  camp  out  in  the  winter  on 
their  way  of  a  hundted  or  two  hundred  miles  from  one 
station  to  another  to  say  Mass.  There  may  be  American 
priests  here,  some  who,  like  myself,  have  heard  such  words 
as  these  made  use  of  by  Father  Abraham,  the  grand  old 
Kentucky  patriarch.  "Father,"  he  said,  "I  am  utterly 
astonished  ;  I  am  amazed ;  I  can  find  no  reason  on  earth 
for  it ;  I  must  cast  my  eyes  to  heaven."  Surely,  if  there 
be  such  things  as  these — if  the  spirit  of  light  and  grace  be 
there,  and  if  its  nature  and  tendency  be  to  grow  and  in- 
crease— may  I  not  promise  myself  to  behold,  ere  my  eyes 
are  closed  in  death,  this  glorious  and  magnificent  sight  of 
the  Catholic  Church  triumphant  in  America?  (Loud 
cheers.)  Oh  !  in  that  day,  when  the  great  flag  of  freedom 
— ^the  flag  unstained  by  blood  shed  in  persecution  or  injus- 


224  The  Catholic  Church  in  America, 

tice,  the  flag  first  upreared  by  Irish  hands  in  the  days  of 
the  first  E-evolution,  and  borne  proudly  by  the  same  brave 
hands  over  a  hundred  battle-lields  fiom  end  to  end  of  the 
land — when  that  flag  shall  wave  over  a  people  united  in 
their  faith,  and  consequently  in  every  minor  relation  of 
life,  sanctified  by  Catholic  sacraments,  purified  by  Catho- 
lic agency,  strengthened  by  Catholic  unity,  emboldened  by 
Catholic  hope,  as  well  as  enlightened  by  Catholic  faith, 
and  all  this  comes  to  crown  the  acute  intellect,  the  strong 
determination,  the  firm  purpose  of  the  natural  American 
man,  where,  since  the  world  was  created  or  redeemed, 
where  was  there  such  a  sight  seen  as  Columbia  will  present 
to  the  nations?  (Immense  applause.)  I  say  for  myself, 
and  for  the  men  of  my  blood  and  of  my  native  land,  it  is 
your  wish  and  mine,  it  is  the  highest  wish  and  desire  of 
millions  of  our  countrymen  in  America,  wlio  pray  day  by 
day  at  the  thousand  altars  of  the  land,  that  in  return  for 
all  that  Columbia  gave  them  God  would  give  to  her  the 
grand  crown  of  Catholic  faith.  Catholic  hope,  and  Catho- 
lic charity,  till  in  the  strength  of  divine  grace  she  shall 
be  the  light  and  the  glory  of  the  whole  world. 

(As  the  reverend  gentleman  concluded  his  magnificent 
oration,  the  audience  rose  with  one  accord  and  clieered 
again  and  again,  while  hands  were  clapped  and  hats  were 
waved,  making  up  a  scene  of  enthusiastic  rapture  such  as 
has  been  rarely  witnessed  amongst  us.) 


The  Catholic  Church  the  Safety,  not  the  Danger. 
OF  THE  Great  American  Republiq 


The  subject  of  this  lecture  is  one  which  Father  Burke  la  admirably  adapted 
to  discuss,  and  one  which  is  of  deep  interest  not  only  to  the  members  of 
tbe  Church  but  to  all  thinking  people.  It  is  one  of  Lis  most  valuable 
lectures,  and  though  it  was  delivered  in  America  we  deem  it  worthy  of 
the  readers  of  this  volume.  Let  it  be  particularly  recommended  to  the 
serious  thought  of  all  lovers  of  American  liberty, 

TvEAR  FRIENDS :  Any  one  who  wishes  to  mark  atten- 
-^  tively  the  course  of  the  events  of  this  world  must 
recognize  in  all  that  he  sees  around  him  the  hand  of  God 
and  the  hand  of  the  devil — God  influencing  all  things  for 
good,  and  the  devil  coming  in  on  every  side  and  trying  to 
spoil  God's  work.  Now,  amongst  the  works  of  God  the 
greatest  is  the  Christian  religion  and  the  Catholic  Church  ; 
and  amongst  the  many  means  that  the  devil  employs  to 
gain  his  end — namely,  that  of  spoiling  the  work  of  God — 
one  great  evil  that  he  makes  use  of  is  to  inspire  the  na- 
tions and  the  people  with  a  kind  of  dread  and  fear  of  the 
Catholic  Church.  He  says  to  the  nations:  "Don't  listen 
to  her ;  don' t  hear  her  voice  at  all ;  don' t  have  anything  to 
say  to  her.  She  is  bad ;  she  will  corrupt  j^ou  ;  she  will 
bewitch  you."  He  gives  them  no  reason  for  this.  He  has 
no  reason  for  it.  Nothing  must  strike  one  more  at  first 
sight  than  the  strange  repugnance  and  unreasoning  fear 
with  which  so  many  sectarians,  Protestants  and  others, 
regard  the  Catholic  Church.  I  remember,  some  years  ago, 
a  very  enlightened,  highly-cultivated  English  lady  came 

225 


226  The  Catholic  Church  the  Safety 

to  Rome  with  her  daughter.  The  daughter  became  a 
Catholic,  and  I  received  lier  into  the  Church.  Her  mother 
came  to  me  the  same  day,  wild  with  grief,  the  tears 
streaming  from  her  eyes— a  heart-broken  woman.  She 
said:  "What  have  you  done  to  my  child?  O  you 
wicked  man !  what  have  you  done  to  my  child  ?  You  have 
ruined  my  child  and  broken  my  heart."  I  said :  "  How  is 
that?"  "Well,"  she  said,  "  you  have  made  a  CathoUc 
of  my  daughter."  "Yes,  that  is  true.  Under  God,  I 
have  been  the  means  of  making  a  Catholic  of  her.  But 
do  you  think  that  is  sufficient  reason  for  breaking  your 
heart  T '  "  Yes,  it  is, "  said  she.  I  said  to  her :  ' '  You  are 
a  well-educated  lady ;  I  simply  ask  you  one  question : 
What  point  is  there  in  the  teachings  or  in  the  practice  of 
the  Catholic  Church  that  you  object  to?"  She  paused 
for  a  moment.  "Well,"  she  said,  "I  don't  know ;  but  I 
know  you  have  bewitched  my  child  and  have  broken  my 
heart."  "  Can  you  find  fault,"  I  said,  "  with  any  one  doc- 
trine of  the  Catholic  Church  that  your  child  has  em- 
braced?" She  said  she  could  not.  And  yet  that  woman 
acknowledged  to  me,  "If  my  child,"  she  said,  "had  re- 
nounced God  and  had  declared  herself  an  atheist,  I  would 
not  be  so  grieved  as  I  am  for  her  to  become  a  Catholic  " ;  and 
that  without  any  reason  under  heaven,  without  knowing 
the  why  or  the  wherefore,  without  being  able  to  find  the 
slightest  cause.  Well,  as  it  happened,  within  twelve 
months  I  had  the  happiness  to  receive  the  mother  into 
the  Church  and  make  a  good  Catholic  of  her.  (Applause 
and  laughter.) 

My  friends,  amongst  the  nations  among  which  I  have 
travelled,  nowhere  have  I  found  this  distrust  and  fear  of 
the  Catholic  Church  less  unreasoning  and  less  powerful 
than  in  America.  I  generally  enter  freely  into  conversa- 
tion with  people,  strangers  with  whom  I  am  thrown.  But 
sometimes  I  have  found  people  to  whom  I  have  said : 
"  Good-moming,"  and  they  would  move  off  as  if  they 
heard  the  rattle  of  a  rattlesnake.  Sometimes  I  have  been 
obliged  to  say  :     "  You  need  not  be  afraid  of  me  ;  I  am  a 


OF  THE  Great  American  Republic.  237 

priest,  but  I  will  not  eat  you."  "Well,  this  is  the  first 
time  in  my  life  that  I  ever  spoke  to  a  Catholic  priest.  Do 
fon  know  that  I  would  rather  not  have  anything  to  say  to 
you  V  But  I  reason  with  him  ;  I  ask  him  :  "What  fault 
have  you  to  find  ?     Why  are  you  afraid  of  me  ? " 

"Well,  nothing  particular — but  I  do  not  know.  It  is  a 
subject  I  avoid.  I  will  not  have  anything  more  to  say." 
Then,  by  a  little  pressing,  I  get  the  man  into  an  argument, 
and  I  find  that  he  has  not  a  single  idea  about  the  Catholic 
Church,  that  he  does  not  know  a  thing  about  it,  that  he  is 
frightened  at  a  bugbear,  an  imagination,  a  creation  of 
his  own  fancy,  like  the  Chinese,  who  make  monsters, 
which  their  soldiers  carry  before  them  in  battle  against 
other  Chinese,  and  at  the  sight  of  which  their  enemies  turn 
and  run  away.  So  Protestantism  for  three  hundred  years 
has  been  making  a  most  horrible  bugbear  of  the  Catholic 
Church — giving  it  horns,  hoofs,  and  tail,  flaming  tongue  of 
fire,  and  great  goggle  eyes  ;  and  it  says  to  the  men  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  who  boast  of  their  intelligence:  "Do 
not  look  at  it !  Run  away  !  Do  not  speak  to  it !  It  will 
bewitch  you.  Hate  it,  detest  it.  Do  not  trust  the  Catho- 
lic Church.  If  you  do,  she  will  put  an  end  to  your  liber- 
ties, your  happiness,  your  all."  And  the  big  boobies  of 
tlie  nineteenth  century  get  frightened  and  run  away. 
(Laughter.) 

Now,  the  subject  on  which  I  propose  to  address  yotu 
this  evening  is  the  glorious  theme  that  the  Catholic  Church 
is  not  the  danger  but,  under  God,  the  future  salvation  of 
this  grand  and  magnificent  Republic  of  America.    (Ap- 
plause.) 

I  confess  to  you,  my  friends,  that  as  firmly  as  I  believe 
in  the  Catholic  religion  ;  convinced  as  I  am  that  that  re- 
ligion is  the  only  true  religion  ;  convinced  as  I  am  that  the 
Church  of  Grod  is  the  only  means  of  salvation — save  and 
except  under  the  mean  pretext  of  invincible  ignorance, 
which  means  that  if  men  knew  a  little  more  they  would  be 
damned  ;  they  are  just  ignorant  enough  to  be  saved ;  a 
little  knowledge  would  be  the  ruin  of  them — believing  all 


228  T3E  Catholic  Church  the  Safety 

this,  I  would  not  .have  the  heart  nor  the  courage  to  speak 
to  the  people  of  America  and  preach  Catholicity  to  them 
if  in  the  secret  recesses  of  my  heart  and  mind  I  had  the 
faintest  idea  that  the  Catholic  religion  would  be  dangerous 
to  the  state.  In  this  age  of  ours  men  are  not  willing  to 
accept  even  the  kingdom  of  heaven  at  the  cost  of  any  great 
sacrifice.  If  God  would  offer  them  heaven  on  condition  of 
giving  up  certain  advantages,  they  would  be  unwilling  to 
accept  it  at  such  a  price.  But  no  single  earthly  advantage 
is  sacriSced,  while  everything  is  gained,  when  a  nation  rises 
up,  as  Ireland  rose  up  under  the  hand  of  St.  Patrick,  and 
like  one  man  opens  its  eyes  and  heart  to  Catholicity. 

First  let  us  reason  a  little  on  this  great  theme.  I  sup- 
pose all  men,  Protestant  and  Catholic  alike,  acknowledge 
that  when  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord  founded  our  religion  on 
the  earth  He  founded  that  religion  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  saving  the  world — that  that  religion  was  to  be  the 
salvation  of  mankind. 

Now,  from  what  did  Christ  purpose  to  save  the  world  ? 
What  Avas  the  evil  He  came  to  remedy  ?  Answer :  The  first 
evil  our  Lord  came  to  remedy  was  ignorance — ignorance 
the  most  deplorable,  the  most  profound.  Could  anything 
be  more  terrible  than  the  state  of  ignorance  in  which 
Christ  found  the  world  ?  Men  of  intelligence,  with  splendid 
minds,  varied  and  profound  genius,  bowed  down  and 
worshipped  their  own  vices  and  their  own  wickedness,  and 
called  those  vices  God.  The  whole  world  worshipped  im- 
purity under  the  name  of  Venus  ;  dishonesty  under  the 
name  of  Mercury,  who  was  the  God  of  Thieves  ;  revenge 
under  the  name  of  Mars — every  vice  and  passion,  even  the 
passion  of  avarice,  that  eats  the  heart  out  of  the  miser, 
which  tliey  adored  under  the  name  of  Plutus,  who  was 
the  protector  of  riches  and  those  that  sought  them.  It 
was  bad  enough  to  be  ignorant  of  the  truth,  but  they  went 
further,  and  they  not  only  lost  sight  of  heaven,  but,  not 
content  with  the  darkness  of  earth,  they  went  grovelling 
down  into  heU  to  find  their  god  there. 

The  second  evil  that  Jesus  Christ  found  in  the  world 


OF  THE  Great  American  Republic.  229 

wide-spread  was  the  evil  of  impurity  sapping  and  destroy- 
ing the  vital  energies,  physical  and  mental,  and  the  power 
and  strength  of  men.  He  found  as  soon  as  manhood  be- 
gan to  dawn  upon  them,  as  soon  as  they  began  to  feel  the 
throbs  of  virile  blood  in  their  veins — He  found  them  yield- 
ing to  every  prompting  of  the  base  command,  going  out 
ravening  to  gratify  the  strong,  unreasoning,  earthly  pas- 
sion that  poisoned  the  spring  of  life  and  destroyed  all  hope 
of  future  manhood.  He  found  impurity  all  over  the  world, 
so  that  the  virtues  of  chastity  were  not  only  not  to  be 
found  amongst  men,  but  it  was  not  even  known  amongst 
them — it  had  no  name.  The  Virgin  Mother,  the  purest  of 
God's  creatures,  had  her  virginity  laid  as  a  reproach  upon 
her.  From  this  impurity  it  would  follow  that  there  was 
no  such  thing  as  the  family  circle,  with  its  blessed  and 
holy  influences.  The  Roman  wife  was  a  slave,  dependent 
upon  the  mere  caprice  of  her  husband,  whom,  when  time 
had  worn  the  bloom  off  her  cheek,  he  exchanged  for  an- 
other and  fairer  woman. 

In  the  third  place,  Jesus  Christ  found  the  evil  of  dis- 
honesty. No  man's  word  was  to  be  depended  upon; 
commercial  honesty  seemed  to  have  perished.  The  old 
straightforward  manner  of  the  first  republican  Romans 
had  departed,  and  in  the  tottering,  effete  empire  dishon- 
esty— commercial,  social,  and  international — was  the  order 
of  the  day. 

These  were  the  diseases  under  which  the  world  suffered. 
Men  sinned  because  they  knew  no  better ;  they  were  igno- 
rant. They  were  steeped  in  impurity,  their  manhood  was 
gone  out  of  them  ;  so  that  a  few  thousand  barbarians  easily 
broke  up  and  smashed  to  pieces  the  mighty  Roman  Empire, 
and  overcame  those  once  invincible  legions  that  had  given 
law  to  the  whole  world.  Whilst  dishonesty  was  creeping 
into  every  rank  of  life,  society  was  rapidly  breaking  up 
into  chaotic  elements. 

What  did  Christ  say  and  do  ?  He  told  men  that  He  had 
come  down  from  heaven  expressly  to  teach  them,  in  order 
that  all  might  know  the  truth.    He  emphatically  declared 


230  The  Catholic  Church  the  Safety 

that  from  His  lips,  and  from  the  lips  of  those  He  had  ajv- 
pointed  to  teach,  the  world  should  gain — not  a  spirit  of  en- 
quiry, my  friends  ;  not  a  spirit  of  Protestantism  looking 
for  the  truth — no;  but  He  said:  "You  shall  know  the 
truth ;  you  shall  have  knowledge  of  it  fixed,  clear,  and 
definite,  and  in  that  knowledge  you  shall  find  your  free- 
dom ;  you  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make 
you  free." 

And  then  the  Son  of  God  laid  His  hand  upon  a  little 
child,  and  said :  "  Blessed  are  the  clean  of  heart,  for  they 
shall  see  God" ;  and  to  all  men  He  said :  "  Unless  you  be- 
come even  as  this  little  child,  you  shall  not  enter  the  king- 
dom." As  if  He  would  say  :  "Behold  this  child  !  no  im- 
pure thought  has  ever  soiled  its  innocence  ;  no  unlawful 
crime  or  sinful  jiassion  has  ever  entered  its  breast ;  unless 
you  become  as  this  little  child,  you  shall  not  enter  the  king- 
dom of  heaven." 

And  then  He  declared  the  sacred  principle  of  conscience, 
that  every  man  should  act  to  his  fellow-men  as  he  would 
wish  them  to  act  to  him — that  every  man  who  perpetrated 
an  outrage  or  injury  should  not  enter  heaven  until  he  re- 
paid the  last  farthing.  He  established  the  principle  of 
social,  commercial,  and  international  honor.  Truth,  chas- 
tity, and  honor  !  behold  the  three  elements  of  the  religion  of 
Jesus  Christ — the  three  grand  sanitary  powers  that  He  had 
put  into  His  Church  when  He  declared  it  to  be  the  salt  of 
the  earth.  It  is  by  truth,  chastity,  and  honor  that  the 
Church  has  saved,  is  saving,  and  is  destined  unto  the  end 
to  save  the  world.  Without  truth,  chastity,  and  honor 
there  is  no  salvation  for  the  people. 

Beflect  first  upon  the  truth.  "VYhy  is  truth  the  salva- 
tion of  the  people  %  For  many  reasons.  I  will  give  you 
only  one.  I  do  not  know  that  it  is  the  highest  reason,  but 
it  is  the  one  that  bears  most  directly  upon  myself.  The 
salvation  of  a  people  lies  in  unity.  To  be  a  unit  is  the  first 
necessity  of  a  people.  Christ  our  Lord  Himself  declares 
that  a  house  divided  against  itself  must  fall.  And  the  first 
element  of  national  existence  and  national  progress  is  that 


OF  THE  Great  American  Republic.  '  231 

the  people  should  be  united ;  and  the  enemy  of  public  free- 
dom and  tiie  liberty  of  the  people  in  all  ages  has  always 
begun  his  infernal  work  by  trying  to  create  divisions  and 
dissensions  among  them.  I  might  point,  as  an  illustration, 
to  Ireland,  the  JSiobe  of  nations,  the  martyred  mother  who 
bore  me.  For  seven  hundred  years  we  have  groaned  be- 
neath the  tyrant's  hands,  pitiless  and  unrelenting,  unre- 
laxing  in  his  grasp.  Why  ?  Because  he  governed  a  divided 
people.  It  was  but  the  other  day  that  an  eloquent  English- 
man in  New  York  said  to  our  very  teeth  that  Ireland  was 
a  slave  because  she  was  divided,  and  on  the  day  that  she 
was  united  no  power  under  heaven  could  bind  her  into 
slavery  for  a  single  hour.     (Applause.) 

Union  being  the  first  element  of  national  existence  and 
progress,  I  ask  what  is  the  first  element  of  this  union — 
what  is  the  strongest  bond  that  can  bind  a  people  together 
and  keep  them  together  ?  I  answer  at  once  :  The  principle 
of  religious  unity.  It  is  the  most  sacred  of  all  bonds,  be- 
cause it  is  the  most  abiding,  the  most  unchanging ;  it  i&  a 
bond  fixed  by  Almighty  God  Himself.    (Applause.) 

Nations  are  sometimes  made  one  by  the  accidental  cir- 
cumstance of  conquest.  But  the  union  that  is  effected  by 
the  sword  must  be  preserved  by  the  sword,  or  it  ceases  to 
exist.  Take  the  union  of  Ireland  and  England.  It  was 
effected  by  the  sword — a  sword  that  was  never  allowed  to 
rust  as  long  as  there  was  Irish  blood  at  hand  to  keep  it 
clean  and  bright  by  the  tears  and  blood  of  the  people. 

But  that  sword  has  begun  to  rust  to-day.  It  is  no  longer 
the  powerful  falchion  it  was  once  in  the  hand  of  a  fearless 
nation.  It  rusts  in  its  scabbard ;  the  nation  that  owns  it 
is  afraid  to  draw  it ;  and  the  people  of  Ireland  are  waiting, 
thinking  that  the  rust  will  come  over  the  brightness  of  the 
blade ;  and  the  moment  it  does,  that  moment  the  union 
which  was  effected  by  the  sword  will  be  broken  by  the 
sword.  (Gfi-eat  applause.)  Why  ?  Because  such  a  bond 
is  not  of  heaven,  but  of  earth. 

Again,  the  accidental  circumstance  of  mutual  consent 
may  bind  nations  together.    For  instance,    the  various 


233  The  Catholic  Church  the  Safety 

States  of  this  American  Union  liave  agreed  and  united  np- 
on  the  basis  of  State  rights.  So  they  have  been  united, 
and  so  they  are  united,  and  may  God  in  heaven  bless  that 
union  and  inspire  every  American  citizen,  great  and  small, 
no  matter  who  he  be,  with  respect  for  the  sacred  principles 
which  the  nation  adopted,  for  it  is  only  by  respecting  them 
on  the  solid  foundation  of  the  law  that  a  people  can  be 
kept  together.    (Applause.) 

Nations,  again,  may  be  bound  together  by  mutual  com- 
mercial interests.  England  and  France  made  a  commercial 
treaty  a  few  years  ago.  But  France  found  the  treaty 
worked  disadvantageously  to  her  and  dissolved  the  treaty, 
and  the  entente  cordiale  of  which  we  hear  so  much  was 
broken. 

There  is  only  one  bond  that  can  bind  a  people  and  keep 
them  together  in  a  union  that  can  never  be  destroyed,  and 
that  is  the  union  of  heart,  soul,  mind,  and  sympathy  that 
springs  from  one  undivided  and  common  faith.  (Ap- 
plause.) Every  other  bond  may  be  shattered,  and  yet  a 
people  remain  essentially  one.  Every  other  preserving  ele- 
ment of  a  race  may  be  destroyed,  and  yet  a  people  will 
retain  their  national  individuality  alive  and  vigorous,  in 
spite  of  everything  on  earth,  because  their  union  comes 
from  God.  Let  us  take  a  case  in  point :  For  seven  hun- 
dred years  the  people  of  my  native  land  have  been  subject 
to  a  series  of  the  most  terrible  persecutions  and  trials  that 
ever  any  nation  in  the  world  suffered.  Her  enemies  wished 
to  break  in  pieces  the  individuality  of  Ireland,  so  that  the 
di^ecta  membra^  the  broken  fragments,  might  be  cast 
into  every  nation  on  earth  and  amalgamate  with  them, 
but  that  the  Irish,  as  a  people,  might  be  wiped  out  from 
the  face  of  the  earth.  For  seven  hundred  years,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  Irish  were  divided  on  every  other  point 
in  councils,  in  politics,  in  symi)athies,  even  in  race  and 
blood,  Ireland  preserved  her  nationality,  and  to-day  re- 
presents a  compact,  strong,  individualized  nationality,  full 
of  life,  youth,  vigor,  intellect,  and  energy.  ^Vhy  \  Be- 
cause God  blessed  us  in  the  midst  of  our  misfortunes 


OF  THE  Great  American  Republic,  233 

with  the  blessing  from  heaven  of  religious  unity.  Now, 
I  ask  you,  as  reasoning  men,  did  Christ  say  anything  about 
this  idea  of  unity  %  The  night  before  the  Son  of  God  suf- 
fered on  the  cross  He  had  His  apostles  around  Him ;  at  the 
last  supper  He  lifted  up  His  eyes  and  hands  to  heaven 
and  made  His  prayer  for  His  apostles  and  His  Church  and 
for  every  man.  What  do  you  think  He  prayed  for  %  He 
said :  ''0  Father  I  I  pray  for  these,  that  they  may  be  one. 
Keep  them  in  unity  as  you,  Father,  and  I  are  one."  He 
repeated  this  over  and  over  again,  and  every  apostle  took 
up  the  same  message.     Then  says  St.  Paul : 

"Brethren,  let  there  be  no  division  among  you,  no 
schism,  no  heresy.  I  pray  you  in  the  Christ  and  the 
Holy  Spirit  that  ye  be  of  one  mind."  These  are  the 
words  of  St.  Paul.  Therefore,  that  unity,  springing  out 
of  religion,  enters  distinctly  into  the  principles  of  govern- 
ment as  it  entered  into  the  prayers  of  Jesus. 

The  next  question  is :  Where  does  that  religious  unity 
exist?  Let  us  for  a  single  instant  suppose  that  the 
Catholic  Church  no  longer  exists  in  America.  Have  you 
then  left  a  single  principle  of  religious  unity  ?  Not  one, 
not  one !  The  Unitarian  denies  the  inspiration  of  the  Bi- 
ble. You  say  there  is  one  common  idea  in  the  Protestant 
sect — that  is,  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ.  Not  at  all.  I 
can  take  you  to  Protestant  churches  in  New  York  and 
Brooklyn,  and  before  you  are  there  five  minutes  you  will 
hear  the  preacher  deny  Xh.Q  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ.  Not 
a  single  principle  of  religious  unity  outside  the  Catholic 
Church ;  but  in  its  place  you  have  Shakers  and  Quakers, 
and  Baptists  and  Anabaptists,  and  Methodists  and  Mor- 
mons. (Applause  and  laughter.)  In  the  midst  of  them 
all,  in  the  midst  of  the  Jarring  discord,  the  sounds  of  their 
bickering  and  quarrelling,  in  the  midst  of  their  mutual 
hurling  of  damnation  at  each  other,  one  having  as  much 
'  authority  to  do  it  as  the  other,  rises  the  awe-inspiring  fig- 
ure of  the  Catholic  Church,  gigantic  in  her  proportions, 
rising  over  the  whole  world,  many-tongued  in  her  voice, 
for  her  word  is  heard  in  every  tongue  in  which  man  ex- 


234  The  Catholic  Church  the  Safety 

presses  his  sorrow  and  Ms  joy ;  crowned  with  two  thou- 
sand years  of  undisputed  glory,  standing  upon  a  pedestal 
sunk  deep  into  the  rock  of  ages,  and  built  up  with  tiid 
blood  of  her  ma-rtyrs,  there  she  stands,  speaking  the  self- 
same words  that  she  spoke  two  thousand  years  ago, 
preaching  the  same  truth,  j)roclaiming  the  same  autho- 
rity: "icome  from  God.  My  message  is  fiom  God.  I 
stood  by  the  Saviour  at  His  cross.  I  stood  by  His  empty 
tomb  on  Easter  morning.  I  stood  with  the  fiery  liames 
over  my  head  on  the  day  of  Pentecost.  I  speak  the  words 
I  have  always  spoken,  and  defy  the  whole  world  to  con- 
tradict me  in  one  word  of  my  speech." 

She  alone  can  create  unity,  because  she  alone  will  per- 
mit no  man  to  contradict  her.  As  she  has  her  message 
fi"om  God,  and  as  that  message  must  be  as  true  as  God, 
who  sent  it,  the  man  who  contradicts  her  must  be  a  liar ; 
he  must  be  an  enemy  of  the  truth  and  a  contradicter  of 
the  truth,  and  the  moment  he  raises  his  voice  against  the 
Church,  though  he  were  the  first  of  her  bishops,  or  the 
most  powerful  king  in  the  world,  the  Church  shuts  his 
mouth  with  her  hand,  and  says:  ''Kneel  down  and  re- 
pent, or  else  let  the  curse  of  excommunication  be  upon 
you.    Begone !  to  wither  and  die,  and  fall  into  hell." 

Wliat  is  the  great  difficulty  with  the  nations  to-dav  ? 
For  fifteen  hundred  years  the  nations  were  united  in  their 
faith.  No  nation  was  Christian  that  was  not  also  Catholic. 
But  Luther  came  and  the  nations  were  divided.  One  of 
the  most  celebrated  and  greatest  statesmen  that  ever  lived, 
William  Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham,  who  governed,  as  Prime 
Minister,  England  and  Ireland  in  1800,  the  year  that  Lord 
Castlereagh,  that  amiable  man,  who  afterwards  cut  his 
throat,  made  the  union  between  England  and  Ireland — 
Pitt  was  decidedly  one  of  the  greatest  minds  in  England  ; 
he  was  obliged  to  resign  the  premiership  because  he 
declared  he  could  no  longer  govern  England  and  Ire- 
land, because  the  people  were  divided  in  their  religion. 
He  solemnly  promised  the  Catholics  that  he  would 
grant  them  emancipation  in  1800 — twenty-nine  years  be- 


OF  THE  Ore  AT  American  Republic,  235 

fore  it  was  forced— lie  pledged  his  almost  royal  word 
that  it  should  be  done ;  but  as  soon  as  it  was  known 
in  England,  and  as  soon  as  Protestant  Ireland  knew  it 
there  was  stirred  up  such  a  clamor  that  the  very  o-reatest 
man  in  the  three  kingdoms  resigned  his  position  and  de- 
clared that  it  was  impossible  to  govern  a  peoiile  divided 
in  religion.  Two  hundred  years  before,  in  1640,  Charles 
I.  promised  to  relax  the  penal  laws  against  the  CathoUcs. 
He  saw  their  injustice.  The  moment  that  it  was  known  in 
England  such  were  the  turmoil  and  the  threats  that  the 
king  waa  obliged  to  break  his  royal  word,  and  put  his 
broken  promise  in  his  pocket,  and  let  the  misery  go  on. 

The  present  Prime  Minister  of  England  is  a  very  fair- 
minded  man.  He  sees  the  injustice  with  which  Catholics 
are  treated.  He  sees  that  every  petty  Protestant  school 
in  Ireland  has  its  endowment  and  its  charter,  whilst  the 
Catholic  University  is  refused  one.  We  did  not  ask  for  a 
half-penny,  only  a  charter  ;  Gladstone  would  be  glad  to 
do  it,  but  he  is  afraid.  One  of  the  grandest  ideas  of  this 
age  of  ours  was  the  unification  of  Germany.  Bismarck,  a 
man  of  wonderful  genius,  conceived  that  idea  and  carried 
it  out  practically — a  magnificent  achievement ;  but  he  is  so 
short-sighted  as  to  be  now  at  work  exasperating  sixteen 
millions  of  the  German  people  who  are  Catholics  by  per- 
secuting their  religion,  shutting  up  their  schools,  driving 
out  their  nuns  and  Jesuits,  and  shutting  their  hospitals. 
He  is  doing  a  foolish  thing ;  but  he  cannot  help  it,  because 
the  nation  decided  that  he  must  do  it.  I  must  say,  as  a 
student  of  history,  that  while  they  lay  to^  our  doors  the 
charge  of  persecution,  nowhere  do  we  read  in  the  annals  of 
the  world  of  persecution  carried  on  with  so  much  gusto 
and  enjoyment  as  the  persecutions  by  the  Protestants 
when  they  have  the  upper  hand.  You  see  it  to-day  in 
Germany.  The  Protestants  there  have  but  a  small  majori- 
ty, but  they  exercise  their  power  pitilessly. 

How  easy  it  would  be  for  Bismarck  to  avoid  all  this  if 
Germany  were  again  all  Catholic,  as  she  was  under  Charles 
v.!  How  easy  it  would  be  for  Gladstone  to  govern  England 


236  The  Catholic  Church  the  Safety 

and  Ireland  if  they  were  a  unit  in  religious  faith  ;  for  when 
this  great  screw  in  the  political  union  is  loose  the  whole 
machine  is  rickety,  and  is  liable  to  come  to  pieces  at  once. 
The  Catholic  Church  alone  can  create  unity.  And  yet 
men  say  the  Catholic  Church  is  dangerous  to  America. 
The  Catholic  Church  is  dangerous  to  America  when  dis- 
union, mutual  distrust,  and  mutual  disaffection  become  one 
of  the  elements  of  the  greatness  of  a  nation,  and  not  until 
then.  The  next  element  of  greatness,  power,  and  strength 
in  a  nation  is  the  virtue  of  purity.  Every  evil,  every  sin, 
in  the  long  run,  tends  to  the  destruction  of  man,  no  matter 
how  pleasant  it  may  be  at  the  moment,  and  every  act  com- 
mitted by  a  nation,  as  well  as  an  individual,  injures  the 
nation  as  well  as  the  individual  in  the  long  run ;  and, 
although  a  hundred  years  may  elapse,  the  punishment 
may  be  traced  back  to  the  crime  that  caused  it. 

The  vice  of  impurity  has  this  peculiarity — that  it  is 
destructive  not  only  of  the  individual  but  of  the  race  ; 
and  it  is  noticeable  that,  though  in  punishing  other  crimes 
God  visited  individuals,  in  punishing  this  vice  He  has 
afflicted  whole  nations. 

The  Flood  and  the  destruction  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrha 
are  examples  of  this  principle. 

(Father  Burke  here  drew  a  beautiful  picture  of  the 
Church,  the  spouse  of  Christ,  calling  her  ministers  to  serve 
at  her  altars,  but  demanding  of  them  as  an  essential  quali- 
fication a  virgin  body,  allowing  no  hand  to  assist  in  her 
holy  rites,  no  voice  to  be  raised  in  her  consecrated  service, 
but  those  of  men  and  women  who  could  bring  to  their  work 
purity.  He  also  showed  how  the  Church  demanded  from 
all  her  members  equal  purity  :  from  the  maiden  and  the 
young  man  virginity,  and  from  the  married  fidelity  to 
the  marriage  vow.) 

To  enforce  this  purity  the  necessity  and  use  of  the  con- 
fessional becomes  apparent ;  for  the  knowledge  that  con- 
fession must  be  made  teaches  every  man  to  watch  his  own 
actions,  words — nay,  his  very  thoughts. 

Contrast    the    purity"  demanded    by    the    Catholic 


/4 


OF  THE  Great  American  Republic.  237 

Church  with  the  impurity  licensed,  and  even  made  a  duty, 
by  Mormonism,  the  last  form  in  which  Protestantism  shows 
itself  to  the  world.  This  is  the  last  issue  of  Protestantism, 
just  as  the  last  issue  of  Protestant  philosophy  is  Darwin- 
ism— that  we  are  descended  from  apes.  These  are  the 
metaphysics  and  ethics  of  the  nineteenth  century  among 
Protestants. 

And  finally,  honesty  is  an  element  in  the  greatness  of  a 
people.  It  is  getting  scarcer  every  day.  Some  time  ago  I 
was  in  a  railway-carriage,  and  a  gentleman  quoted  the 
poet :  "An  honest  man  is  the  noblest  work  of  God,"  when 
another  man  cried  from  the  other  end  of  the  carriage :  "I 
am  sorry  to  say  that  God  Almighty  does  not  seem  to  spend 
much  time  producing  works  of  that  kind  nowadays." 
(Laughter.)  I  don't  speak  from  experience  ;  I  know  nothing 
about  society  ;  I  don't  belong  to  it,  I  belong  to  the  cloister. 
I  find  those  amongst  whom  I  live  are  honest  men.  It  is 
easy  to  be  honest  among  us,  for  we  have  not  anything  that 
persons  could  take  from  us.  (Laughter.)  But  I  read  the 
papers,  and  hear  great  complaints  of  commercial  dishon- 
esty. 

(Father  Burke  here  dwelt  at  some  length  on  the  prevail- 
ing forms  of  dishonesty — adulteration,  cheating,  interna- 
tional dishonesty,  social  dishonesty — alluding  to  the  occu- 
pation of  Rome  by  Victor  Emmanuel  as  a  piece  of  robbery 
paralleled  by  that  of  a  burglar  who  would  make  out  his 
title  to  your  effects  by  virtue  of  his  six-shooter ;  and  show- 
ing that  the  Catholic  Church  inculcated  honesty  of  aJl 
kinds.) 

If,  then,  0  people  of  America !  if  union  founded  upon 
the  grand  principle  of  religious  unity  ;  if  the  preservation 
of  strength,  manhood,  genius,  and  intellect ;  if  honesty, 
public  and  private — if  these  three  things  are  necessary  for 
you  in  America,  you  must  come  to  the  Catholic  Church  to 
get  them,  because  you  cannot  get  them  elsewhere.  (Ap- 
plause.) If,  on  the  other  hand,  these  things  are  dangerous, 
then  the  Catholic  Church  is  a  danger  to  America.  If 
America  looks  upon  these  things  as  dangerous— any  nation 


238    The  Catholic  Church  the  Safety  of  the  Republic. 

that  looks  upon  religious  knowledge  and  unity,  upon  puri- 
ty and  chastity,  upon  public  and  private  honesty — any  na- 
tion that  looks  upon  these  things  as  dangerous  is  already 
self-condemned.  But  America  does  not  look  upon  these 
things  as  dangerous.  No,  the  intelligence  that  has  been 
thus  born  and  cradled  in  freedom  never  yet  turned  away 
from  the  glorious  light  of  the  Catholic  Church,  but  sooner 
or  later  turned  to  it.  The  nation  that  has  opened  her  im- 
perial bosom,  irrespective  of  previous  antecedents,  to  all 
who  have  been  driven  from  other  nations  by  religious  or 
political  tyranny,  that  nation  sooner  or  later  will  become 
Catholic ;  and  in  the  day  when  mighty  America  becomes 
Catholic,  in  the  day  when  the  genius  of  Catholicity,  the 
first  mother  of  human  liberty,  the  guardian  of  human  puri- 
ty, the  proud  shield  of  the  dignity  of  womanhood,  the 
splendid  and  unchanging  voice  proclaiming  herself  the 
strong  preserver  of  public  and  private  honesty — in  the  day 
when  this  genius  of  Catholicity  enters  into  the  mind  and 
heart  of  America,  when  this  mighty  people  will  be  united 
as  one  man  by  the  sacred  union  of  religious  unity,  based 
upon  freedom,  based  upon  integrity  and  upon  justice — tell 
me  is  there  any  man  living,  tell  me  is  there  any  philosopher 
upon  earth,  poet,  or  orator,  whose  vivid  imagination  can 
approach  to  the  magnificent  realities,  the  intellectual,  moral, 
and  physical  grandeur  that  America  will  present  to  the 
world  in  that  glorious  day  ?    (Prolonged  applause.) 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Education. 


The  following  discourse  is  the  charity  sermon  preached  by  Father  Burke  in 
SS.  Michael  and  John's  Church,  Dublin,  Kovcmber  26,  187G,  in  aid  of 
the  evening  and  Sunday  schools  founded  in  the  last  century  by  Dr.  Betagh, 
S.J.  The  text  is  taken  from  the  fourth  chapter  of  St.  John:  "The 
Samaritan  woman  said  to  Jesus  :  Sir,  I  perceive  that  Thou  art  a  prophet. 
Our  fathers  adored  on  this  mountain,  and  you  say  that  at  Jerusalem  is  the 
place  where  men  must  adore.  Jesus  saith  to  her  :  Woman,  believe  me,  the 
hour  cometh  when  you  shall  neither  on  this  mountain  nor  in  Jerusalem  adore 
the  Father.  You  adore  that  which  you  know  not :  we  adore  that  which  we 
know;  for  salvation  is  of  the  Jews.  For  the  hour  cometh,  and  now  is,  when, 
the  true  adorers  shall  adore  the  Father  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  God  is  a 
Spirit,  and  they  that  adore  Him  must  adore  Him  in  spirit  and  in  truth." 

MY  dearly-beloved  brethren,  I  need  not  remind  you  of  the 
1t±  great  object  for  which  yon  are  gathered  here  to-day. 
It  is  to  strengthen  and  enlarge,  as  well  as  to  continue,  the 
Sunday  and  evening  schools  which  for  many  years  have 
been  attached  to  this  church  and  this  parish.  I  ask  you, 
therefore,  to  consider  in  relation  to  this  great  charity  three 
thoughts  which  I  will  endeavor  to  lay  before  you  :  first, 
the  necessity  under  which  we  all  lie  of  being  educated  our- 
selves and  of  instructing  and  educating  our  children ; 
second,  the  necessity,  special  and  specific,  which  the  Catho- 
lic Church,  above  all  other  bodies  on  this  earth,  has  for 
education ;  third,  the  nature  of  her  duty  and  her  dogma 
in  enforcing  that  necessity.  I  am  come  here  to-day  to 
speak  in  favor  of  education.  If  you  believe  the  writers  of 
former  days,  and  many  of  the  writers  of  the  present  day 
as  well,  I  am  come  here  to  speak  to-day  against  my  own 
convictions  and  against  my  own  conscience.  They  will 
tell  me — ^presuming  to  know  more  about  me  than  I  know 

339 


240  The  Catholic  Church  and  Education. 

about  myself — ^that  as  a  Catholic  priest  I  am  an  enemy  of 
education  ;  above  all,  as  a  Catholic  monk  I  am  the  sworn 
foe  of  knowledge.  It  is  in  vain  that  I  challenge  the  asser- 
tion. It  is  in  vain  that  I  point  to  the  history  of  centuries, 
during  which  the  order  I  belong  to,  the  habit  I  wear,  and 
the  priesthood  which  Almighty  God  has  conferred  on  me 
have  been  the  beacons  of  light  to  the  world.  It  is  in  vain 
that  I  appeal  against  those  objections,  against  this  preju- 
dice, to  their  own  experience,  to  the  evidence  everywhere 
around  them  ;  they  but  hug  their  prejudice  and  falsehood 
more  closely  to  their  breasts  and  exclaim :  "At  least  it  is 
certain  that  the  Catholic  Church  is  somewhat  afmid  of 
education." 

Education  is  a  simple  necessity  for  the  high  service  of 
the  revealed  religion.  I  need  not  remind  you  that  in  every 
man  there  is  a  double  nature — the  nature  of  the  body  and 
the  nature  of  the  soul.  Each  separate  nature  has  its  own 
wants,  its  own  requirements,  and  it  is  only  by  complying 
with  the  requirements  of  the  body  and  of  the  soul  that 
each  is  developed  into  the  fulness  and  perfection  of  its  na- 
tural existence.  Therefore  does  the  young  child  require 
food  that  it  may  grow.  It  must  be  nursed,  and  housed, 
and  clothed,  and  cared  for  in  all  its  bodily  wants,  else  it 
either  dies  or  gradually  becomes  a  stunted,  weakly,  de- 
formed, and  apparently  misbegotten  and  disgusting  object. 
As  it  is  with  the  body  so  also  is  it  with  the  soul.  The  soul 
must  be  nursed  and  nurtured,  and  have  all  its  wants  at- 
tended to  and  supplied  as  fully  as  the  body  ;  else  though 
the  body  may  grow  and  develop  to  the  full  perfection  of 
its  physical  formation,  yet  the  passions  of  the  body  will 
develop  with  its  development,  will  spring  up  like  giants  in 
their  might,  and  assert  themselves  in  the  irresistible  crav- 
ing for  every  form  of  the  vilest  and  most  despicable  self- 
indulgence. 

The  neglected  soul  is  not  dead.  Its  nature  is  immortal, 
and  it  can  never  die.  It  remains  stunted  and  deformed, 
an  infant  in  its  powers  and  in  its  growth,  incapable  of  ex- 
ercising its  noblest  faculties,  which  lie  dormant  and  unde- 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Education.  241 

veloped  within  it,  void  of  all  indications  or  inducements  to 
good,  shut  out  from  all  hope  on  earth  or  in  heaven.  Man 
without  instruction  is  powerless  to  accomplish  the  pur- 
poses of  his  creation.  God  gave  him  reason  to  guide  his 
will.  That  reason,  stunted  in  ignorance,  undeveloped  by 
education,  is  utterly  powerless.  The  will  recognizes  the 
control,  and  submits  to  the  control,  of  those  baser  passions 
which  the  will  should  govern.  The  vile  handmaid  of 
earth  comes  and  declares  herself  queen  over  the  soul,  and 
makes  a  slave  of  that  better  part  that  came  from  heaven 
by  divine  infusion  into  man.  Thus  neglected,  uninstructed, 
uneducated,  he  is  not  available  even  for  any  of  the  ordi- 
nary purposes  of  human  society.  Human  society  demands 
interchange  of  thought,  communion  of  mind  with  mind. 

But  this  man  has  no  mind ;  his  soul  is  fallow  within 
him.  No  sunlight  of  knowledge  has  ever  enlightened  the 
darkness  of  his  understanding.  Human  society,  even  in 
its  humblest  form,  demands  some  technical  knowledge. 
This  man  has  none.  Therefore  his  companionship  must  be 
with  the  brute  beasts,  and  even  they  surpass  him  in  phy- 
sical strength,  the  only  property  that  his  manhood  has  be- 
stowed. Then  by  the  voice  of  nature  alone  man  cries  aloud 
for  education — light,  light !  for  light  is  the  yearning  and 
the  wailing  of  the  soul  in  darkness.  Light  was  the  first 
gift  of  the  Creator  toman.  When  He  sent  His  "spirit 
brooding  over  the  water"  He  began  the  sublime  work  of 
creation  by  making  light.  "And  God  said,  Let  there  be 
light,  and  light  was  made."  "Light !"  exclaims  the  dark- 
ened soul;  "give  me  light  for  earth,  give  me  light  for 
heaven,  give  me  light  for  time,  give  me  light  for  eternity." 
Education  is  the  light  of  the  soul.  Education  is  as  neces- 
sary to  the  soul  as  food  and  clothing  are  to  the  body.  I 
need  not  remind  you  how  completely  all  hope  and  Joy  is 
blotted  out  of  the  life  of  an  uneducated  man.  Even  in 
this  life  his  fate  is  sealed.  He  can  never  rise ;  if  there  be 
any  change  in  his  low  condition,  that  change  must  be  for 
the  worse— change  that  will  lead  him  down  step  by  step 
to  the  lowest  stage  of  misery,  and  finally  fling  him  into  a 


2i2  Tee  Catholic  Church  and  Education, 

pauper's  unknown  grave.  I^o  matter  how  great  the  genius 
with  which  God  may  have  endowed  him,  the  pity  is  but 
the  greater  if  that  genius  be  undeveloped  by  education. 
Therefore  it  is  that  the  Catholic  Church,  from  the  day  that 
her  Divine  Lord  and  Spouse  set  her  up  to  be  light  and  sal- 
vation to  the  world,  has  always  been  the  mother,  the  lov- 
ing, careful  mother,  of  education  and  instruction.  She 
has  spread  light  over  the  world  —light  not  merely  of  divine 
but  of  human  knowledge. 

During  the  days  of  her  triumphant  reign,  during  the 
mediaeval  history  of  the  civilized  world,  wherever  she  set 
her  foot  she  left  the  commemoration  of  her  passage  behind 
her  in  the  colleges  and  universities  which  she  founded. 
Genius  looked  to  her  cloisters  and  her  colleges  for  its 
necessary  development.  Everywhere  the  history  of  the 
world  tells  us  that  sanctity  in  the  Catholic  Church  went 
hand  in  hand  with  learning,  as  we  see  by  looking  to  the 
history  of  our  own  mother-land,  when  it  was  called  for  its 
sanctity  the  "Island  of  Saints"  and  the  "Island  of 
Scholars."  I^ever  was  Ireland's  sanctity  greater,  purer, 
or  brighter  than  when  her  learning  was  at  its  highest,  and 
when  she  shone  forth  as  a  light  to  aU  the  students  of  the 
civilized  world.  How,  then,  could  the  Catholic  Church  be 
said  to  be  the  enemy  of  education,  to  be  the  foe  of  know- 
ledge ?  To  come  from  her  general  history — to  narrow  our 
views  from  that  retrospect  of  all  homes  and  lands  over  the 
earth — let  us  come  to  consider  the  charity  for  which  I  am 
here  pleading  to  you  to-day,  and  there  in  that  charity  you 
will  find  the  whole  mind,  the  whole  genius,  the  whole 
missiocL  of  the  Catholic  Church. 

This  is  the  oldest  educational  charity  in  this  city  of 
Dublin,  I  may  say  in  Ireland.  More  than  a  hundred  years 
ago  a  father  of  the  Society  of  Jesus  came  to  Dublin.  He 
was  already  a  noted  and  distinguished  member  of  that 
great  society  which  has  been  from  the  day  of  its  founda- 
tion the  home  of  the  heroic  and  of  the  greatest  of  the 
Clmrch's  sons.  He  came  loaded  with  titles  and  with  the 
acknowledged  admiration  of  some  of  the  greatest  of  the 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Education.  243 

members  of  Ms  society  and  of  the  learned  bodies  of  Europe. 
He  came  at  a  time  when  all  the  iniquitous  powers  of  the 
world  rose  up  as  they  rise  up  to-day — every  government, 
every  king  and  emperor,  every  revolutionary  and  popular 
movement  amongst  the  people — and  they  all  had  for  their 
sole  object  the  suppression  and  destruction  of  the  Jesuits. 
Oh !  if  they  could  only  be  crushed  and  annihilated,  then 
the  enemy  of  God  and  man  felt  he  could  stretch  out  his 
arm  with  a  free  sweep  over  Christian  society,  and  destroy 
it.  And  such  was  the  pressure  that  the  world  brought  to 
bear  upon  the  Church  that  for  peace'  sake,  and  for  reasons 
which  it  is  not  becoming  in  me  to  judge — which  God  for- 
bid I  should  judge — the  Society  of  Jesus  was  suppressed 
a  few  years  after  the  arrival  of  this  great  Jesuit  in  Dublin. 
He  had  to  put  oS  his  habit ;  he  had  to  leave  his  convent 
home  ;  and  then  he  himself  knelt  before  the  Archbishop  of 
Dublin  and  asked  to  be  allowed  to  labor  for  the  Irish 
people,  who  were  the  object  of  his  greatest  love.  He  was 
sent  into  this  parish. 

At  that  time  Ireland  was  only  beginning  to  breathe 
faintly  under  the  first  timid  relaxation  of  the  penal  laws. 
For  two  hundred  years  the  nation  lay  as  dead  at  the  feet 
of  her  enemies.  Every  impulse  of  national  and  religious 
life  seemed  to  be  not  only  paralyzed  but  deadened  utterly 
within  her.  !N"o  schools  in  the  land ;  no  priests  to  minis- 
ter to  the  people ;  no  churches  wherein  to  assemble ;  no 
altars  before  which  to  adore  their  God  !  All  was  pro- 
scribed, all  was  banished,  and  a  desolation  the  most  ter- 
rible that  the  world  ever  witnessed  was  seen  externally 
over  Ireland,  whilst  deep  in  the  heart  of  the  people  burned 
the  flame  of  divine  faith  and  charity  as  bright  and  as  pure 
as  ever.  But  now  the  penal  laws  began  to  be  somewhat 
relaxed,  and  the  Catholics  of  Ireland,  and  especially  of 
this  city  of  Dublin,  began  timidly  to  assemble  in  hidden 
places,  and  there,  trembling,  to  worship  the  Lord  God, 
raised  up  before  them  by  the  hands  of  His  priest.  The 
great  Jesuit,  coming  into  this  parish,  saw  among  the  many 
wastes  around  him  the  most  terrible  of  all — the  waste  of 


t"  244  The  Catholic  Church  and  Education. 

ignorance.  The  youth  had  been  uneducated ;  it  was  no 
fault  of  the  Church,  no  fault  of  the  Irish  people,  that  it 
had  been  made  for  many  years  a  felony  and  a  crime  to 
teach  a  child  to  read.  They  were  already  grown  up  in 
their  ignoi*auce  around  him,  and  his  heart  beat  witli  love 
for  them,  and  his  great  mind,  filled  with  the  knowledge 
which  the  Catholic  faith  produces,  taught  him  that  the 
very  first  requirement  and  first  want  of  the  people  was 
education,  and  therefore  he  cast  about  to  supply  this 
want. 

But  the  youth  had  grown  up ;  it  was  no  longer  the 
question  of  educating  little  children.  They  had  grown  into 
young  men  and  women  ;  they  were  at  their  various  occu- 
pations all  day  long.  How  could  he  catch  them  in  order 
to  educate  them  ?  The  prolific  mind  of  the  servant  of  God 
devised  means,  and  he  instituted  in  this  parish  the  Sun- 
day-schools for  those  who  are  at  work  all  the  week,  and 
the  evening-schools  for  those  who  are  at  work  all  day. 
He  was  seventy-three  years  of  age,  he  was  broken  down 
with  infirmities,  and  his  heart  was  broken  when  he  saw 
his  great  mother-order  scattered  and  dispersed,  although 
Crod  gave  him  the  consolation  to  live  until  he  beheld  it 
arising  once  more — arisen  in  almost  a  glorified  body  at  the 
command  of  another  pontiff  in  the  Church  of  God.  But 
even  at  that  advanced  age  this  man,  seventy-three  years 
old,  having  labored  all  day  visiting  the  sick,  hearing  con- 
fessions in  the  church,  performing  all  the  duties  of  a 
faithful  pastor,  when  the  evening  came,  and  when  he 
might  in  all  conscience  and  reasonableness  seek  a  little 
rest  for  his  aged  body,  what  rest  did  he  take  \  He  went 
down  into  a  cold,  damp  cellar  in  one  of  those  crowded 
neighboring  streets,  and  there  he  sat  night  after  night  for 
many  a  year,  and  spending  the  hours  he  might  have  given 
to  rest  in  instructing  the  young.  So  successful  were  his 
labors  that,  from  the  time  he  established  the  evening- 
school  until  the  day  of  his  death,  in  1811,  there  passed 
under  Dr.  Betagh's  hands  upwards  of  three  thousand 
men  whose  minds,  sealed  fountains,  were  opened  to  know- 


The  Catholic  Chzhj^ch  and  Education.  245 

ledge  by  tMs  almost  divine  magician — three  thousand  men 
sent  forth,  each  one  now  educated,  to  scatter  around  him, 
as  far  as  influence  might,  the  saving  influence  of  the  light 
which  he  had  received  from  the  aged  saint  of  God.  Be- 
hold the  work  in  its  history ! 

See  the  ardor  with  which  the  Catholic  Church,  embod- 
ied in  the  mind  and  action  of  this  great  servant  of  God, 
gave  itself  to  the  world  in  education !  See  the  glorious  re- 
sults— thousands  of  minds  enlightened,  tliousands  of  souls 
liberated  from  the  worst  of  slavery,  that  of  ignorance ; 
thousands  of  men  sent  forth  in  the  fulness  of  their  faith, 
and  with  no  small  means  of  worldly  knowledge,  to  make 
their  way  in  this  world,  and  to  assert  for  Ireland  and  Ire- 
land' s  people  that  great  heritage  which  God  has  given  to 
Ireland  of  genius  and  intellectuality !  The  saintly  man, 
crowned  with  years  and  with  successful  labors,  passed  to 
receive  his  reward  before  God.  But,  dearly- beloved,  the 
work  which  he  inaugurated  was  continued  by  zealous  and 
faithful  men,  his  successors  in  the  priesthood ;  it  has  come 
down  along  more  than  a  hundred  years.  Men  assemble 
every  night  in  these  schools  after  their  hard  day's  work, 
and  so  they  are  drawn  from  all  the  dangers  and  the  evils 
which  night  brings  forth.  They  pass  through  the  crowded 
streets ;  the  emissaries  of  evil  cross  their  path ;  the  mes- 
senger from  hell  beckons  to  them.  But  they  are  bound  on 
the  high  and  holy  mission  of  self -education,  and  they  pass 
the  tempters  by.  The  temple  of  drunkenness  flares  and 
flames  in  their  eyes,  and  those  treacherous  doors  are  omi- 
nously on  the  spring.  The  touch  of  a  finger  will  open  to 
the  ante-chamber  of  hell ;  but  they  are  bound  upon  the 
high  mission  of  self -education ;  they  turn  aside  from  that 
which  was  the  most  degrading  of  all  that  could  degrade 
and  demoralize  man,  and  thus  they  are  saved  by  these 
evening- schools  from  the  very  dangers  which  surround 
their  path.  They  go  forth  with  so  much  human  know- 
ledge as  puts  them  in  the  relation  not  only  of  an  intellectu- 
al kind  with  their  fellow- man  but  also  in  relation  with 
the  past,  opens  up  to  them  the  thresholds  of  the  discov- 


246  The  Catholic  Church  and  Ebtjcation, 

eries  of  knowledge,  puts  before  them  that  technical,  scien- 
tific knowledge  which  alone  may  be  wanting  to  enable 
them  to  better  themselves  in  life  and  to  advance  in  this 
world,  and  make  for  themselves,  perhaps,  a  name.  And 
yet,  in  the  face  of  all  this,  whilst  her  priesthood,  as  her 
history  tells  us,  became  martyrs  to  education,  we  are  told, 
indeed,  that  the  Catholic  Church  is  the  enemy  of  educa- 
tion !  She  is  specially  noted  for  this  work  of  education  ; 
she  alone — the  Catholic  Church  alone — makes  ignorance 
Buch  a  crime  as  to  exclude  from  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
Ignorance  alone,  in  Catholic  theology,  is  such  a  sin  as  to 
exclude  man,  without  any  other  sin,  from  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  Do  you  not  all  know,  my  friends,  and  have  we 
not  all  been  taught  since  our  childhood,  that  there  can  be 
no  salvation  without  a  knowledge  of  at  least  the  princi- 
pal mysteries  of  faith  ? 

The  Church  of  God  is  founded  on  this  knowledge  ;  she 
cannot  exist  without  it,  much  less  flourish  and  triumph, 
and  pursue  her  apostolic  career  amongst  the  nations. 
Knowledge  is  her  first  principle,  because  Deus  scientiarum 
Dominus — God  is  the  lord  of  knowledge — and,  adds  the 
apostle  :  "He  that  is  ignorant  shall  be  ignored  and  unac- 
knowledged of  God."  Nay,  more,  the  Catholic  Church 
depends  more  than  any  other  institution — I  will  not  say 
religion,  for  there  is  no  religion  outside  of  the  Catholic 
Church  ;  there  are  forms  of  opinion  calling  themselves  re- 
ligion, but  religion  means  the  cultus  Dei,  the  worship  of 
God,  and  that  worship  must  be  one,  it  must  be  true,  it 
must  absorb  the  whole  intellect  and  heart  by  faith  and 
divine  grace,  it  must  take  the  whole  man  and  put  him  in 
the  presence  of  God  for  the  purpose  of  worship,  or  else  it 
is  no  religion — the  Catholic  Church,  I  say,  depends  more 
than  any  institution  in  this  world  on  education,  whether 
we  consider  her  dogmas — that  is  to  say,  her  belief — or  her 
practice.  Think,  my  dearly  beloved,  how  finely  intellectu- 
al is  the  religion  which  is  based  and  founded  upon  the 
mystery  of  the  Incarnation,  and  demands,  my  beloved,  of 
its  children  to  grasp  the  mighty  thought  that  God  became 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Education.  247 

man,  so  that  out  of  two  natures,  the  divine  and  the  human, 
only  one  person,  and  that  person  divine,  sprang  forth.  This 
mystery  is  so  great  in  itself,  in  its  intellectual  power,  and 
in  the  demand  that  it  makes  upon  our  intelligence,  that  the 
greatest  philosophers  of  old,  the  masters  of  all  human 
knowledge,  were  unable  to  grasp  it  in  its  immensity  ;  and 
yet  the  humblest  Catholic  child  not  only  receives  and  be- 
lieves it  but  pronounces  it  every  time  that  he  says  :  "Holy 
Mary,  Mother  of  God,  pray  for  us."  "Mother  of  God  !" 
Behold  the  whole  mystery  of  the  Incarnation.  This  mys- 
tery, the  fundamental  one,  is  followed  up  by  a  series  of 
the  highest  and  most  arduous  intellectual  truths. 

They  come  to  us,  it  is  true,  in  the  shape  of  divine  as- 
sertion ;  they  come  to  us  on  the  authority  of  the  Almighty 
God  who  utters  them,  and  of  the  infallible  Church  who 
interprets  them.  But  tell  me,  is  it  no  small  act  of  intel- 
lectual power  to  grasp  the  idea  of  a  God  revealing  un- 
changeable truth — that  is  to  say,  manifesting  his  own 
nature — of  a  church  on  earth,  unchanging,  infallible,  bear- 
ing witness  to  that  one  truth,  and  standing  up  for  it 
against  all  the  powers  of  this  earth  and  all  the  powers  of 
hell  %  I  might  dilate  upon  this  subject ;  I  might  go  from 
dogma  to  dogma  of  the  Catholic  Church,  and  throughout 
them  all  we  find  her  making  an  appeal  upon  the  trained 
intelligence  of  her  children,  and  making  knowledge  abso- 
lutely necessary,  and  the  deficiency  of  that  knowledge 
penal.  But  let  us  pass  on  to  the  practices  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  Remember  again  that  as  she  is  the  only  body  on 
earth  that  teaches  with  authority,  that  appeals  to  autho- 
rity, that  never  changes  in  her  teaching,  she  is  the  only 
body  upon  this  earth  calling  itself  religion  which  pre- 
scribes certain  specific  duties  and  obliges  her  children  to 
perform  them.  These  duties  are  many,  as  we  know  by  the 
experience  of  our  daily  life.  Ah  !  my  brethren,  it  is  no 
light  yoke,  it  is  no  small  burden,  that  the  holy  Church  of 
God  puts  upon  us  for  the  purpose  of  saving  our  souls. 

Every  single  duty  that  the  Catholic  Church  imposes 
upon  her  children,  with,  perhaps,  the  single  exception  of 


248  The  Catholic  Church  and  Education. 

fasting,  is  intellectual — appeals  to  the  intelligence,  api)eal3 
to  knowledge,  appeals  to  the  instructed  mind  and  the 
trained  intellect.  The  first  of  these  duties  is  prayer.  You 
know  we  are  bound  to  pray — nay,  more,  that  if  a  man 
committed  no  other  sin  except  the  simple  neglect  of  prayer, 
a  prolonged,  total  neglect  of  prayer  would  be  in  itself  a  sin 
sufficient  to  exclude  that  man  from  God  for  ever.  We  are 
bound  to  pray.  What  is  prayer  ?  The  humblest  Catho- 
lic child  is  bound  to  pray.  What  does  that  mean? 
"Prayer,"  says  St.  Augustine,  *'is  an  elevation  of  the 
soul  to  God."  Can  anything  be  imagined  more  intellectu- 
al or  more  elevated  ? — the  intelligence  created  in  man  to 
meet  the  uncreated  intelligence  in  God  in  intercommunion 
— thought  between  the  thinking  soul  and  the  essential 
thought  which  is  God.  Prayer  involves  a  knowledge  of 
God' s  mercy,  as  how  can  we  pray  to  that  of  which  we  know 
nothing  ?  Prayer  involves  knowledge  of  ourselves,  of  our 
own  wants  and  miseries,  else  how  can  we  lay  them  before 
Him  %  Prayer  involves  that  grand  action  by  which  the 
intellect  of  man,  by  the  power  of  grace,  is  able  to  go 
from  earth  to  heaven  and  put  him  into  communion  with 
God.  Yet  the  only  religion,  the  only  teaching  body,  in 
the  world  that  so  enforces  the  duty  of  prayer  as  even  to 
exclude  from  the  kingdom  of  heaven  those  who  will  not 
pray  is  declared  to  be  an  unintellectual  and  unspiritual 
religion ! 

Next  to  prayer — and  I  will  take  only  one  other  of  the 
practices  of  the  Catholic  Church — is  the  duty  of  preparing 
for  the  frequenting  the  Sacrament  of  Penance.  Every  one 
among  us  Catholics  goes  frequently  to  confession.  Now, 
consider  what  that  involves.  It  is  an  act  not  only  of  living 
prayer  but  of  magnificently  elevated  intellect.  Man  must 
have  knowledge,  no  matter  how  simple  yet  deep  and  pro- 
found, before  he  can  prepare  for  confession  properly.  He 
must,  first  of  all,  know  the  law  of  God,  for  he  is  about  to 
take  himself  to  task  as  to  whether  he  observed  that  law  or 
violated  it ;  and  how  can  he  know  that  unless  he  knows  the 
law  %  Knowing  the  law,  he  is  preparing  for  confession,  and 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Education.  M9 

he  then  turns  from  the  contemplation  of  God's  holy  law 
and  of  his  own  personal  duties  to  God — he  turns  into  him- 
self, he  examines  himself,  he  learns  to  know  himself,  he 
reads  his  own  soul  and  his  own  conscience  like  an  open 
book.  That  knowledge  of  self  was  declared  by  the  great 
philosopher  of  old  to  be  the  very  highest  point  of  human 
intelligence  and  of  human  knowledge.  And  when  he  has 
come  to  know  his  own  shortcomings  another  kind  of 
knowledge  must  be  then  exercised  by  him  :  he  must  know 
what  sin  is,  what  the  nature  of  sin  is ;  he  must  know  some- 
what the  beauty  of  the  God  whom  he  has  outraged,  and 
God's  claim  upon  him  for  obedience  ;  he  must  know  what 
the  natural,  the  supernatural,  deformity  of  sin  is,  else 
how  can  his  heart  be  troubled  and  his  eyes  weep  peniten- 
tial tears  over  his  guilt  ?  Oh  !  how  manifold  is  the  know- 
ledge demanded  of  the  humblest  Catholic  in  order  to  per- 
form the  ordinary  duty  of  going  to  confession. 

Who,  therefore,  can  deny — either  looking  with  the  eyes 
of  nature  or  with  the  superior  illuminated  eyes  of  faith  on 
this  divine  institution  of  God — who  can  deny  that  the 
Catholic  Church  subsists  without  education?  For  four 
thousand  years  the  world  was  preparing  for  the  liicama- 
tion  and  the  coming  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  all  that  went  be- 
fore was  a  preparation  for  it.  All  the  knowledge  of  pagan 
philosophy  pointed  to  it ;  all  the  sacrifices  of  the  Old  Law 
symbolized  it,  and  held  it  out  in  the  future  as  a  promise 
to  be  fulfilled.  Even  so,  dearly  beloved,  the  Catholic 
Church  demands  the  right  and  power  to  instruct  and  edu- 
cate her  children.  But  education,  and  instruction,  and 
human  knowledge  she  only  makes  tho  handmaid  of  her 
own  divine  purposes  and  religion.  She  gives,  indeed,  all 
that  the  world  can  give  of  human  knowledge  to  her  chil- 
dren, but  she  is  careful  to  send  hand-in-hand  with  that 
human  knowledge  the  element  of  divine  knowledge  by 
faith,  and  the  infusion  of  divine  grace  to  create  charity, 
that  there  may  be  not  only  the  power  of  knowledge  in  X'\iq 
intelligence,  but  that  there  may  be  strength  in  the  will  and 
unity  in  the  aspiration  of  her  children. 


850  The  Catholic  Church  and  Education. 

Behold,  then,  the  great  purpose  for  which  I  am  here.  I 
ask  you  to  strengthen  the  zealous  pastors  and  priests  of 
this  parish.  Already  has  this  charity  so  grown  upon  them 
that  the  parish  priest  has  been  obliged  to  incur  a  heavy 
debt  for  the  purchase  of  other  premises,  to  enlarge  its 
classes,  and  afford  to  the  children  of  labor  the  inestimable 
food  of  knowledge,  of  which  they  may  have  been  deprived 
in  their  legitimate  childhood,  either  by  the  neglect  of  pa- 
rents or  by  circumstances  of  poverty,  or,  perhaps,  by  the 
unthinking  wilfulness  of  the  child  himself.  And  when 
the  young  man,  growing  into  manhood,  realizes  for  the 
first  time  all  that  he  has  lost  by  his  neglect  of  school — 
then,  when  liis  heart  might  almost  despair  within  him — 
when,  helpless  and  disheartened,  he  is  almost  tempted  to 
give  up  the  race  of  life  as  utterly  lost — when  every  door 
of  advancement  and  promotion  in  life  would  seem  to  be 
closed  in  his  face  by  his  own  neglectful  wilfulness  that 
condemned  him  to  a  life  of  ignorance — then  the  evening- 
school  of  St.  Michael  and  St.  John  opens  its  door  and 
says  :  "Here  is  the  refuge  ;  here  is  still  for  you  the  know- 
ledge that  will  open  your  mind,  and  renew  for  you  the 
promise  of  your  life ;  here  is  the  knowledge  still  for  you 
that  will  enable  you  to  receive  all  the  supernatural  gifts 
and  all  the  divine  graces  which  are  in  the  hands  of  the 
holy  Church  of  God." 

This  is  the  knowledge  out  of  which  is  true  wisdom. 
"Wisdom  is  an  inestimable  treasure  to  man,"  says  the 
Holy  Ghost,  which  they  that  possess  become  the  sons  of 
God,  for  it  teaches  justice  and  prudence,  and  temperance 
and  fortitude,  which  are  virtues  better  than  all  else  in  this 
life.  Let  us  not  deny  this  priceless  treasure  to  the  chil- 
dren of  toil.  Let  us  open  to  them  and  keep  open  those 
fountains  of  holy  knowledge,  that  we  may  deserve  to  re- 
ceive from  the  Lord  the  highest  crown  of  all — the  crown 
which  no  mere  human  mercy  can  make  its  own — the  crown 
reserved  for  those  whose  mercy  is  eternal  and  divine  for 
the  sake  of  the  Lord  God.  "They  that  instruct  many 
unto  justice  shall  shine  as  stars  for  all  eternity." 


The  Church  and  Civil  Government. 


Father  Burke  in  this  discourse  handles  an  interesting  subject  in  a  manner 
which  should  set  at  rest  the  carpings  of  those  persons  who  find  fault  with 
the  Church  in  its  relations  to  government.  He  shows  clearly  that  good 
government  cannot  exist  successfully  without  the  Church. 

MY  DEAR  FRIENDS :  Before  I  go  any  further  it  is  ne- 
""^  cessary  I  should  put  before  you  some  notion  of  what  is 
the  Church,  and  what  is  civil  government,  and  what  each 
of  them  signifies.  To  do  so  I  must  go  back  to  the  very  be- 
ginning. Man  was  created  by  Almighty  God  with  most 
magnificent  gifts — the  amplest  endowments  of  intelligence, 
a  power  of  knowledge  limitless  in  its  range,  and  a  perfect- 
ly free  and  unfettered  will.  He  who  abuses  the  power  of 
knowledge  against  his  fellow-man  makes  him  an  intellec- 
tual slave.  He  who  abuses  the  power  of  intellect  against 
his  fellow-man  makes  him  a  bond  slave,  and  both  one  and 
the  other  is  the  oppressor  of  his  fellow-man.  The  man 
who  propounds  an  intellectual  falsehood,  whether  it  be 
historic,  philosophical,  or  religious,  most  of  all  if  it  be  re- 
ligious, is  a  tyrant,  an  enslaver,  and  a  debaucher  of  the 
dupes  who  listen  to  him.  He  is  as  unjust  and  tyrannical 
in  abusing  the  gifts  God  has  given  to  him  as  the  slave-dri- 
ver in  South  America  who  has  whipped  his  slaves  to  death. 
When  the  Almighty  God  created  man  with  these  gifts  of 
intelligence  and  free  will,  He  ordained  that  where  that  free- 
dom was  there  should  be  a  government  of  truth  and  of  law. 
And  in  the  submission  of  intellect  by  which  it  recognizes 
and  acknowledges  truth,  and  of  the  will  in  which  it  ac- 
knowledges the  Omnipotent  God,  in  these  two  lies  the 
quintessence  of  human  freedom.    (Applause.) 

251 


252  Tee  Church  and  Civil  Oovernment, 

Freedom  does  not  consist  in  writing  or  doing  whatever 
we  please  or  believing  whatever  we  like,  if  it  be  false.  That 
is  not  freedom.   Freedom,  as  defined  by  Almighty  God,  re- 
sides in  the  knowledge  of  truth  and  in  obedience  to  just 
law.   (Applause.)    Hence  the  Son  of  God  had  said :  "  You 
will  know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  wiU  make  you  free.'* 
The  martyr  lying  in  his  dungeon  on  the  eve  of  execution, 
with  fetters  on  his  limbs,  was  yet  free,  because  his  soul 
possessed  the  inestimable  boon  of  truth.     So  it  is  that 
the  man  who  admits  the  reason  and  the  omnipotence  of 
just  law  and  of  authority,  and  who  yields  to  it  a  free  and 
unfettered  homage  of  his  will,  is  therefore  no  less  a  free- 
man.     He  is  still  more  one  because  he  fulfils  the  duties  of 
a  free  citizen.      (Applause.)      Freedom,  therefore,  means 
intellect  guided  by  truth,  justice  expressed  by  law ;   and 
therefore  the  government  which  is  the  expression  of  au- 
thority for  intelligence  and  the  will  is  the  guarantee  of 
freedom.    Reflect  on  these  things,  for  in  this  revolutionary 
and  rebellious  age  men  are  apt  to  confound  liberty  with 
libertinism,  and  freedom  with  injustice.    The  government 
of  truth  and  law,  expressed  by  competent  authority,  is 
the  very  quintessence  and    guarantee  of   freedom,  and 
therefore  has  God  made  man,  and  when  He  did  so  He 
made  him  by  necessity  subject  to  government.      This  gov- 
ernment is  twofold,  because  man  is  twofold.      Man   is 
created  for  time,  to  arrive  at  a  certain  number  of  years  in 
this  world,  to  fulfil  a  certain  cycle  of  duties,  to  acquit 
himself  of  certain  obligations  to  society,  to  his  fellow-men, 
and  to  his  native  land — so  far  man  is  the  child  of  this 
world.    But  man  has  a  higher  destiny,  that  goes  out  be- 
yond the  limits  of  time.      Man  was  not  created  for  a  few 
years  of  this  present  life  alone.   He  has  to  act,  think,  live,' 
and  exercise  all  the  vitality  of  his  being  as  long  as  God  is 
on  his  throne  in  heaven,  and  that  is  for  an  endless  eter- 
nity.   (Applause.) 

And  as  Almighty  God  created  His  own  masterpiece  and 
His  own  image  in  freedom  of  vrill  and  of  intellect,  so  also 
for  man,  m  his  temporal  and  his  eternal  relations,  has  He 


,,T, 


The  Church  and  Civil  Government.  253 

appointed  a  twofold  government — temporal  and  eternal. 
The  temporal  belongs  to  the  state,  to  the  constituted  andj 
lawful  authorities  who  govern  the  state,  which  enacts  laws 
for  the  preservation  of  society,  for  the  regulation  of  all 
our  citizens,  and  their  temporal  relations  to  each  other,  and 
for  all  that  belongs  to  time.  That  is  civil  government,  su- 
preme because  of  God,  for  it  holds  the  sword  which  belongs 
to  Him,  and  its  power  comes  from  Him ;  for  all  power, 
temporal  and  eternal,  comes  from  God.  I  am  a  citizen 
of  the  state  and  under  the  authority  of  the  law,  and 
I  ground  my  obedience  to  it  on  the  responsible  power 
which  was  delegated  from  on  high  to  man.  (Applause.) 
And  if  I  were  not  so  instructed  as  to  recognize  in  the  law 
the  reflex  of  the  divine  justice  of  God— if  I  were  not  so 
instructed  by  my  religion,  I  would  tear  to  pieces  and 
trample  beneath  my  feet  every  law  that  prompted  man  to 
fetter  his  intelligence  or  his  will.     (Applause.) 

But  there  is  the  second  and  the  far  greater  relation  of 
man  to  eternity.  That  is  the  great  duty  which  deals,  not 
with  time,  short  and  fleeting,  but  on  which  depends  the 
destiny  or  doom  of  man  for  eternity — ^the  duty  he  derives 
from  that  intelligence  he  received  from  Almighty  God. 
Here  it  was  that  he  entered  the  higher  sphere  of  his  duties, 
and  for  it  the  laws  are  found  in  the  holy  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  That  Church  is  a  kingdom.  He  who  founded  her 
called  her  His  kingdom — ''^regnum  meuTrir  *' Art  Thou, 
then,  a  king,"  said  Pontius  Pilate,  "O  Man  of  Sorrow! 
yet  true  God  ? "  He  answered :  "  I  am,  but  my  kingdom 
is  not  of  this  world.  It  is  of  heaven."  My  kingdom  is  my 
Church — ^my  royal  kingdom.  That  is  the  city  which  He 
compares  to  a  city  situate  on  the  mountain-side,  that  all 
men  who  stand  on  the  plain  will  see  its  grandeur  and  ad- 
mire its  consistent  beauty ;  that  is  the  city  founded  on  a 
rock  by  the  hand  of  God,  and  that  rock  is  Peter,  the 
Prince  of  the  Apostles,  and  the  central  stone  of  the  arch 
on  which  Christ  built  His  Church.  (Applause.)  Being  a 
kingdom,  it  has  its  authority  and  it  has  its  laws.  That 
authority  is  from  God  directly.    These  laws  are  a  reflex  of 


254  The  Church  and  Civil  Goverxment. 

God's  infinite  reason  and  Justice  ;  thay  are  the  immediate 
revelation  of  God  in  matters  of  faith,  and  they  are  the  se- 
lected image  of  the  sanctity  of  God  stamped  on  Cliristian 
morality.  These  laws  belong  to  the  Catholic  Church — (ap- 
plause)— they  constitute  her  government.  Thus  we  find 
that  there  are  the  civil  government  and  the  government  of 
the  Church.  They  are  both  ordained  by  Almighty  God 
and  for  the  well-being  of  man.  Civil  government  deals 
with  all  matters  concerning  this  world ;  the  other  is  for 
our  eternal  well-being,  and  deals  with  all  matters  concern- 
ing not  only  time  but  eternity.  The  Church  liolds  the 
conscience  of  man.  Through  his  conscience  is  man,  by  di- 
vine light,  ruled  by  faith  ;  and  therefore  it  was  that  the 
apostle  said  that  he  preached  again  and  again  that  Christ 
should  be  born  in  His  disciples. 

Now,  the  question  arose,  Did  these  two  governments 
clash  ?  That  is  one  of  the  present  questions  of  the  day. 
Is  one  of  them  destructive  of  the  other?  Must  the  triumph 
of  one  prove  the  ruin  of  the  other  ?  That  is  the  great  ques- 
tion, and  now  come  forward  the  great  prophets  of  the  day 
to  answer  it.  One  of  them  is  a  great  philosopher,  and  says 
man  is  not  capable  of  government  in  the  world,  because, 
he  says,  man  is  only  a  well-developed  ape.  (Laughter.) 
That  is  what  Mr.  Darwin  says.  Could  you  get  two 
hundred  monkeys  and  drill  them,  and  make  them  shoulder 
arms  ?  Could  they  hold  a  parliament  ?  Certainly  not. 
If  this  Darwinian  theory  holds  good,  we  are  all  apes  minus 
the  tails — (laughter) — and  nothing  remains  but  for  each  man 
of  us  to  take  his  own  branch  of  a  gum-tree  and  crack  his 
own  nut.  (Laughter.)  His  theory  resolves  itself  into  its 
own  great  absurdity. 

Let  Mr.  Darwin  pass  on.  Another  figure  moves  up — a 
grand  figure,  and  one  that  we  thought  would  be  a  grand 
historic  figure.  A  man  comes  out  before  us  over  whose 
grave  we  had  fondly  hoped  to  have  erected  a  statue,  and 
on  its  pedestal  the  inscription,  ''Intellect,  justice,  reli- 
gious freedom.'*  But  he  comes  before  us  to-day  blasted 
and  seared  with  the  lightning  which  he  himself,  like  an- 


The  Church  and  Civil  Government.  255 

other  Prometheus,  called  forth  from  heaven — a  fallen 
angel.  It  is  the  figure  of  William  Ewart  Gladstone.  (Ap- 
plause and  murmurs.)  He  comes  before  us  with  his  foul, 
bitter  accusations  against  the  Catholic  Church,  and  says 
that  the  two  governments  are  incompatible.  He  sajs  in 
effect  that  if  the  Catholic  Church  is  to  live  the  state  must 
fall,  and  on  its  ruins  be  built  up  an  overbearing,  ignorant, 
and  a  domineering  priesthood,  a  tyrannical  priesthood, 
through  which  the  Church  will  rise  ;  or  if  the  state  is  to 
assert  its  rights  and  maintain  its  own  independent  freedom, 
it  must  be  built  on  the  ruins  of  the  Church.  Oh !  what  a 
change.     "  Quantum  mutatus  ah  illo  I " 

Time  was  when  this  once  glorious  name  reminded  us  of 
all  that  was  greatest  in  the  spirit  of  true  progress,  founded 
on  justice,  honesty  and  freedom,  and  of  glorious  ideas  of 
the  past  and  glorious  hopes  of  the  future.  But  to-day 
what  are  his  dimensions?  He  has  warred  against  the 
Church  of  God,  and  borne  false  testimony  against  it ;  and,  as 
at  the  touch  of  Ithuriel's  spear,  one  far  greater  than  Mr. 
Gladstone  arose  and  crushed  him  to  the  earth.  That  was 
the  glorious  John  Henry  Newman.  He  dealt  with  the 
Protestant  champion — (applause) — and  overcame  him  by  the 
inherent  force  and  power  of  truth  and  mighty  genius. 
Time  was  when  Mr.  Gladstone's  name  was  beginning  to  be 
a  household  word  in  the  land,  and  now  he  is  what  he  is. 
Of  the  man  we  will  say  no  more,  but  of  his  public  con- 
duct there  is  yet  something  to  be  said.  First  of  all,  we 
hold  that  the  man  who  says  the  Catholic  Church  is  antago- 
nistic to  the  civil  government  inherently  ;  that  she  is  in- 
herently antagonistic  to  social  liberty  in  its  true  sense,  and 
to  real  progress  ;  that  she  is  an  intellectual  tyrant,  seeking 
to  trespass  on  the  domain  of  civil  government — we  hold 
that  man  lacks  philosophic  truth,  historic  truth,  and  ex- 
perimental truth.  That  he  has  no  philosophic  truth  can 
be  seen  in  a  moment. 

First  of  all,  could  it  be  possible  that  the  Catholic 
Church,  if  she  be  as  we  know  her  to  be,  the  true  Church  of 
God,  can  be  the  enemy  of  civil  government  ?    Can  she  bo 


256  The  Church  and  Civil  Government. 

incompatible  with  the  rights  of  citizenship,  of  progress,  or 
of  national  liberty  ?  Can  these  things  be  ?  Civil  govern- 
ment is  the  ordinance  of  Almighty  God,  coming  as  the  re- 
flection of  His  glorious  and  greatest  authority.  Conse- 
quently, the  only  real  and  reliable  claim  that  the  state  has 
to  our  honor  and  obedience  is  that  we  recognize  in  it  the 
justice  and  authority  of  God.  (Applause.)  We  have  also 
seen  that  the  Church  government  in  things  eternal  and  in 
things  temporal  springs  from  God,  and  is  the  subject  of 
his  first  and  greatest  love.  Consequently,  civil  govern- 
ment and  Church  government  both  spring  from  God. 
Therefore  they  are  not  antagonistic.  If  they  were,  God 
would  be  contradicting  Himself.  His  authority  in  things 
material  would  be  destructive  of  His  authority  in  things 
eternal,  and  that  is  impossible.  (Applause.)  Any  man, 
therefore,  who  comes  forward  to  say  that  the  existence  of 
the  Catholic  Church  in  any  state  or  amongst  any  people 
is  incompatible  with  true  liberty  and  progress  tells  a  phi- 
losophic lie — nay,  more,  he  tells  a  historic  lie.  I  am  go- 
ing to  make  a  bold  assertion,  and  I  do  so  knowing  that  my 
words  will  be  carried  abroad  over  the  face  of  the  earth  on 
the  wings  of  the  press,  for 

"  A  chiel's  amang  ye  tafein'  notes, 
I  An'  faith  he'll  prent  it." 

(Laughter  and  applause.)  I  know  that  what  I  assert 
now  will  be  told  for  years  to  come,  and  yet  I  assert  the 
great  truth.  Never  since  the  Catholic  Church  grew  up 
side  by  side  with  civil  government  and  with  civilization, 
which  she  has  created,  never  in  any  one  well-ascertained 
instance  has  the  Catholic  Church  intruded  on  the  domain 
of  civil  government.  (Applause.)  Never  has  she  taken  on 
herself  to  contradict  the  civil  government,  or  to  interfere 
with  it  in  the  promulgation  of  any  just  or  legitimate  law. 
Never  has  she  been  known  to  tell  any  people  that  they 
had  a  right  to  violate  any  law.  Never  has  she  sanctioned 
any  rebellion  against  known,  just,  and  legitimate  authority 
in  the  state.  She  has  never  told  these  things  to  any  peo- 
ple who  had  the  grace  to  listen  to  her.     This  challenge  I 


The  Church  and  Civil  Government.  257 

fling  out  broadly  and  boldly,  and  I  defy  fearlessly  tlie  in- 
dustrious student  of  history  to  point  out  any  single  part 
of  history  that  would  bring  home  to  the  Catholic  Church 
the  charge  that  she  was  ever  an  unjust  impediment  to  the 
course  of  legitimate  civil  government.  The  civil  govern- 
ment imposes  taxes.  When  did  the  Catholic  Church  ever 
tell  the  people  that  they  should  not  pay  fair  and  just 
taxes  ?  When  the  people  were  taxed,  and  taxed  almost  to 
death,  the  great  preacher  of  patience  says :  "  Pay  as  long 
as  you  can.  If  the  Government  did  not  want  it  they 
would  not  ask  it  of  you."  "Ah!"  said  a  man  once  to 
him,  "  if  it  were  not  for  you,  and  the  like  of  you,  with  all 
the  powers  of  the  law,  they  would  not  be  turning  me  out." 
And  now  I  shall  turn  the  tables  on  Mr.  Gladstone,  al- 
though the  "chiels"  are  still  "  amang  ye  takin'  notes." 
I  say  it  under  the  same  sense  of  responsibility  as  I  made 
my  former  assertion.  I  would  lay  down  another  general 
proposition. 

Since  the  day  the  Catholic  Church  founded  the  civil 
government — and  I  claim  that  she  was  its  real  foundress — 
it  has  never  been  able  to  stand  on  its  legs  independently 
of  her.  From  the  time  that  civil  government  first  got  on 
its  legs  it  has  never  been  able  to  work  properly  without 
the  help  of  the  Church  ;  and  yet  it  has  been  coming  in  and 
taking  up  matters  of  which  it  knows  nothing,  and  in  which 
its  action  is  fatal  to  man's  freedom  and  man's  free  will. 
(Applause.)  The  civil  government  is  the  creation  of  the 
Church,  and  it  can  easily  be  proved.  The  Catholic 
Church  was  founded  nearly  one  thousand  nine  hundred 
years  ago  by  the  Son  of  God  made  man,  and  He  told  His 
disciples  that  they  were  to  live  under  the  civil  government 
and  the  law  of  the  Church.  Here  were  the  words  in 
which  He  told  it  to  them  and  in  which  He  tells  it  to  us : 
They  brought  him  a  coin,  and  said:  "Tell  us.  Master,  are 
we  to  pay  taxes  to  Caesar?"  And  he  said:  "Render  to 
Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's,  and  to  God  the  things 
that  are  God's."  They  were  Caesar's  subjects  and  they 
should  pay  tribute — that  is,  the  taxes  which  he  has  a 


258  The  Church  and  Civil  Government. 

right  to  call  for  from. them.  But  they  were  also  God's 
subjects,  and  they  must  give  to  Him  what  He  demands 
and  what  belongs  to  Him. 

For  the  first  three  hundred  years  after  Almighty  God 
founded  the  Church  there  was  civil  government  existing. 
It  was  a  government  which  was  unjust,  and  which  sorely 
tried  the  patience  of  the  early  Christians.  But  the  Church 
taught  them  that  they  were  bound  to  obey  it,  and  they  did 
so,  in  accordance  with  the  words  of  St.  Paul :  "Be  subject 
to  the  powers  that  be."  Yet  for  more  than  three  hundred 
years  it  filled  the  amphitheatres  \Nith  the  blood  of  the 
best  and  bravest  children  of  the  Church  of  God.  Still  the 
Christians  obeyed  it,  even  when  they  were  strong  enough 
to  rebel — when  they  were  strong  enough  to  raise  a  success- 
ful rebellion  against  that  monstrous  civil  government. 
(Loud  applause.)  But  that  which  the  Christians  did  not 
do,  because  they  were  Christians,  the  Goths  and  Vandals 
did.  They  had  no  church  and  no  divine  government,  and 
obeyed  no  human  law.  They  destroyed  cities ;  they  rav- 
ished and  ruined  palaces  and  provinces  ;  they  sacked  and 
set  fire  to  imperial  Rome  itself,  and  not  a  single  vestige 
remained  of  the  ancient  civil  government.  When  these 
barbarians  were  satiated  with  plunder  and  with  blood, 
and  the  sword  dropped  out  of  their  hands  crimsoned  with 
gore,  the  Catholic  Church  found  itself  in  the  midst  of  the 
chaos  of  society.  (Applause.)  She  alone  remained  pure 
and  powerful  during  those  troubled  times,  for  God  had 
breathed  on  her  and  promised  to  be  with  her  always,  even 
to  the  end  of  the  world. 

For  twelve  hundred  years  she  taught,  wrote,  and  acted 
from  the  necessity  of  her  own  existence,  and  because  she 
could  not  teach  the  Gospel  to  mere  scourges  of  the  world. 
Out  of  the  chaos  she  created  civilization  and  civil  govern- 
ment. (Applause.)  And  thus,  while  the  Church  was 
forming  modem  society,  obtaining  for  England  one  of  her 
oldest  and  greatest  rights,  obtaining  for  the  cities  of  Italy 
their  municipal  rights,  restraining  with  strong  hand  the 
licentiousness  of  the  mediaeval  dukes  and  barons  of  Eu- 


The  Church  and  Civil  Government.  259 

rope,  and  everywhere  making  herself  the  interpreter  and 
champion  of  true  freedom,  she  was  founding  civil  govern- 
ment. And  yet,  after  all  she  has  done  for  it,  civil  gov- 
ernment has  tried  to  encroach  on  the  rights  and  dominion 
of  the  Church  in  three  ways.  Firstly,  it  has  tried  to 
usurp  the  rights  of  the  Church  of  Grod  in  the  matter  of 
education  ;  secondly,  in  the  matter  of  the  most  important 
of  the  sacraments — matrimony ;  thirdly,  in  the  internal 
arrangements  of  the  Church  in  her  sanctuary. 

Now,  retiect  on  these  three  things,  and  say  how  far  we 
ought  to  listen  to  Mr.  Gladstone  when  he  accuses  the  Ca- 
tholic Church  of  trying  to  subvert  civil  government.  If 
there  is  anything  specially  dear  to  the  Church  of  God,  it 
is  the  education  of  children.  Education  means  to  bring 
the  man  out  of  the  child.  The  poet  has  said  that  the  child 
is  father  to  the  man.  So  he  is  ;  the  little  child  is  parent  of 
the  future  man.  Man  should  be  liberated  to  be  formed  out 
of  the  child,  who  has  within  him  the  seeds  of  his  manhood. 
Whatever  he  has  in  him  is  to  be  brought  out  by  educa- 
tion ;  and  if  he  is  to  be  fashioned  in  the  image  of  Christ, 
and  to  be  prepared  for  the  enjoyment  of  heaven  with  God, 
endowed  with  the  glorious  attributes  of  faith,  hope,  and 
charity,  the  Church,  the  Catholic  Church  alone,  can  bring 
him  thus  out  of  the  child.  (Great  applause.)  Yes  ;  the 
man  who  comes  and  says  that  statesmen  should  educate 
this  child,  who  says:  "You  priests,  with  your  message 
from  heaven,  stand  aside ;  you  priests,  with  your  sacra- 
ments and  cross,  stand  aside  ;  I  will  not  allow  these  sacra- 
ments or  that  cross  to  touch  this  young  child  ;  you  priests, 
trying  to  discover  the  finger  of  God  in  all  events,  I  will 
not  allow  you  to  discover  the  finger  of  God  in  any  idea" — 
to  such  a  man  I  would  say  that  the  grossest  ignorance 
would  be  better  for  a  child  than  such  teaching  as  he  would 
give  him,  and  that  he  is  training  him,  not  for  heaven,  but 
for  hell.  (Applause.)  And  yet  this  is  what  civil  govern- 
ment nowadays  is  always  aiming  at. 

Seven  hundred  years  ago  the  German  emperor,  Frede- 
rick Barbarossa,  founded  the  University  of  Naples  for  the 


360  The  Church  and  Civil  Government, 

express  purpose  of  destroying  the  pope's  University  of 
Bologna.  The  new  university  was  worthy  of  its  mission. 
Teachers  and  pupils  were  alike  corrupt ;  so  much  so  that 
when  Thomas  Aquinas — the  greatest  genius  that  God  ever 
created  in  His  Church — went  amongst  them,  after  a  year 
so  much  was  he  disgusted  by  their  conduct  and  teaching 
that  he  left  them,  and  put  on  the  habit  of  a  Dominican 
and  became  one  of  the  greatest  lights  of  the  Church. 

When  Elizabeth  wanted  to  establish  the  blessed  Pro- 
testant Reformation  in  Ireland,  what  did  she  do  ?  In  her 
apostolic  authority,  and  in  that  virginal  meekness  that 
never  spat  in  a  bishop's  face  or  boxed  an  earl's  ears — that 
queen  whose  love  for  heaven  was  so  great  that  when  she 
was  about  to  die,  this  worthy  daughter  of  Henry  VIII., 
she  could  only  put  her  hands  into  her  mouth  ;  this  base 
woman,  who  wanted  to  establish  Protestantism  in  this  old 
Catholic  country — what  did  she  do  ?  She  founded  Trinity 
College.  She  enlarged  its  foundations  till  it  became  the 
greatest  in  the  land.  She  saw  very  well  what  education 
could  do,  and  then  she  made  a  law  that  if  any  Catholic 
layman  or  parent  taught  a  Catholic  child  he  was  to  be 
put  to  death  for  felony.  (Sensation.)  When  she  ascended 
the  throne  she  found  six  hundred  priests  of  my  order  (the 
Dominicans)  in  Ireland  teaching  the  grand  Thomistic 
theology,  and  she  passed  her  maiden  hand  over  them  so 
lightly  that  when  she  lay  dying  in  Hampton  Court,  blas- 
pheming (jfod,  only  four  out  of  the  six  hundred  remained. 
(Sen"sation.)  Five  hundred  and  ninety-six  died,  or  per- 
ished in  exile,  under  the  treatment  of  that  awful  woman, 
who  was  one  of  the  most  awful  pictures  that  rise  in  the 
pages  of  history.  She  claimed  the  right  of  educating  our 
youth  in  Ireland. 

From  the  time  that  Patrick  placed  his  hand  on  the  head 
of  Bridget,  the  women  of  Ireland  had  been  its  pride.  But 
if  the  power  that  the  queen  sought  of  educating  our  chil- 
dren had  been  obtained,  what  would  have  become  of  them  ? 
What  would  become  of  the  womanhood  of  our  country 
under  the  training  she  would  select  for  them  ?     Still  fur- 


Trb  Church  and  Civil  Governxeitf.  261 

ther  to  show  how  the  state  sought  to  obtrude  itself  into 
the  domain  of  education,  and  not  only  that,  bat  to  exclude 
the  Church  fiom  teacliing  the  children  committed  to  its 
care  by  Almighty  God,  let  me  mention  a  law  recently 
passed  in  Italy,  by  which  it  was  declared  that  if  a  man  had 
been  taught  by  a  priest  he  was  not  eligible  for  any  govern- 
ment office.  There  is,  say,  the  office  of  county  surveyor 
vacant— (a  laugh) — ^and  two  young  men  present  themselves 
as  candidates  for  it.  One  of  them  is  thoroughly  up  in  his 
business  ;  he  knows  all  that  the  requisites  of  the  situation 
demand.  The  other  is  a  "stupid,"  without  two  ideas  in 
his  head.  They  are  examined,  and  the  examiners  say  to 
the  first:  "This  is  a  splendid  fellow."  The  other  knows 
nothing,  and  they  say  :  "As  for  this  fellow,  he  is  a  fool." 
And  they  say  to  the  clever  man  :  "Where  were  you  edu- 
cated ?"  He  answers :  "  I  never  went  to  school ;  my  father 
hired  a  poor  but  good  and  learned  priest,  who  taught  me, 
and  it  is  to  him  I  owe  all  I  know  "  ;  or  he  says  :  "  I  got  my 
training  from  a  Jesuit."  To  the  fool  they  say  :  "  And,  my 
good  fellow,  where  were  you  educated  ?"  "  Begorra,"  he 
says,  "I  do  not  know  where  I  was  educated  at  all. 
(Laughter.)  The  man  that  tried  to  teach  me  was  a  Jew, 
and  I  di4  not  mind  what  he  said.  He  told  me  not  to  be- 
lieve in  Grod,  and  I  did  not  believe  in  God,  and  that  is  all 
I  know."  Then  they  turn  to  the  highly-trained  and  edu- 
cated young  man,  and  say:  "My  dear  sir,  we  are  very 
sorry  for  you ;  the  fool  must  be  the  county  surveyor." 
(Laughter.)    What  do  you  think  of  that  ? 

And  the  civil  government  says  the  Catholic  Church  is 
wrong  in  not  bending  down  to  such  a  system  as  that — 
(applause) — and  not  giving  some  support  to  it!  And  because 
the  hierarchy  and  priesthood  of  Ireland  will  not  conde- 
scend to  take  theology  from  Darwin  and  ethics  from  Tyn- 
dall,  and  because  they  rose  up  and  stood  between  the  peo- 
ple and  their  peril,  Mr.  Gladstone  has  thrown  off  the 
mask  and  said  :  "  It  is  the  Irish  bishops  who  have  forced 
me  to  write  all  this."  (Applause.)  And  if  it  were  the  Irish 
bishops  who  have  torn  the  mask  off  this  man's  face  and 


262  The  Ceurch  and  Civil  Government. 

compelled  him  to  put  out  tlie  poison  that  was  fomenting 
in  his  embittered  heart ;  if  it  were  the  bishops  of  Ireland 
who  were  able  to  stand  between  him  and  their  people,  and 
defeat  any  scheme  of  education  that  would  not  "educate" 
the  Irish  people,  that  would  not  train  them  for  God  and 
eternity,  then  all  honor  to  the  Irish  bishops.  (Loud 
applause.) 

Here  was,  then,  the  second  matter  in  which  the  civil 
government  intruded  on  the  domain  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
The  civil  government  comes  in  and  says  to  the  Church : 
*'  You  must  let  me  into  the  sanctuary  !  You  must  let  me 
put  on  the  surplice  and  the  stole."  For  what  purpose? 
To  destroy  the  most  important  of  all  the  sacraments  of  the 
Church  of  God — the  Sacrament  of  Marriage.  Properly 
speaking.  Baptism  and  Holy  Orders  were  greater  than 
Matrimony  ;  but  if  we  had  no  real  Catholic  parents,  what 
use  would  it  be  to  baptize  children  in  the  faith,  for  who 
would  train  them  in  it  ?  And  where  would  be  the  subjects 
for  the  Sacrament  of  Orders  if  there  were  no  Catholic 
children  ?  Matrimony  is  the  fountain-head  of  Christian 
society.  (Applause.)  Our  Divine  Lord  performed  His 
first  miracle  for  a  marriage  ceremony,  and  thus  raised  it 
from  the  position  of  a  civil  contract  to  the  distinction  and 
importance  of  a  sacrament.  St.  Paul,  inspired  of  God, 
tells  us  that  it  is  a  great  sacrament,  and  why  ?  Because  it 
is  the  symbol  and  type  of  the  union  of  Jesus  Christ  with 
His  Church.  "This  is  a  great  sacrament,  but  I  speak  in 
Christ  and  in  His  Church."  Christ  can  never  be  wanting 
to  His  Church,  the  Church  can  never  be  faithless  to  Christ. 
He  said  to  her :  "  I  will  be  with  yon  all  days,  even  to  the 
cjonsummation  of  the  world  " ;  and  again  :  "On  this  rock  I 
will  build  my  Church,  and  the  gates  of  hell  shall  not  pre- 
vail against  it."  (Applause.)  And,  therefore,  speaking 
of  this  mystic  union,  the  apostle  said  :  "  Christ  loved  His 
Church,  and  gave  Himself  np  for  her."  For  what  purpose 
did  He  do  so  ?  To  present  her  to  Himself  without  spot  or 
stain,  and  that  while  time  shall  hold  she  may  be  worthy  to 
be  the  symbol  of  God.   Therefore  marriage  is  indissoluble ; 


The  Church  and  Civil  Government.  268 

for  so  is  the  union  of  the  Son  of  God  with  the  Church ; 
and  the  Church  says  :  "  What  God  has  joined  let  no  man 
separate."  The  man  who  attempts  to  sunder  that  bond 
commits  a  sacrilege  against  society,  against  the  Church, 
and  against  God,  who  in  the  Sacrament  of  Matrimony 
makes  man  and  woman  one.  Then  is  woman  raised  to  the 
full  dignity  of  matronhood,  and  is  placed  upon  that  throne 
from  which  no  hand,  save  that  of  God,  can  remove  her. 
(Applause.) 

For  this  great  right  and  position  the  Catholic  Church 
has  ever  contended.  When  Philip  Augustus,  the  most 
potent  monarch  of  his  age,  wanted  to  put  away  his  lawful 
wife,  attracted  by  the  beauty  of  a  young  maiden,  he  ap- 
pealed to  the  pope  for  a  divorce.  "Heaven  and  earth  will 
pass  away,  and  the  generations  will  perish,  O  king !  but 
the  word  of  God  will  remain  for  you,  and  that  word  is 
tliat,  unless  death,  nothing  will  separate  you  from  your 
lawful  wife."  (Great  applause.)  So  said  the  pope. 
*'But,"  said  Philip,  "I  will  cast  the  bishops  and  priests 
into  prison,  and  I  will  drown  the  Catholic  world  in  blood, 
or  I  will  carry  my  point."  "Do,"  said  the  pope,  "but 
you  cannot  sever  the  bond  of  God."  (Applause.)  And 
when,  three  hundred  years  later  than  Philip  Augustus, 
Henry  VIII.  arose  and  wanted  to  put  away  Catharine  of 
Aragon,  his  good  and  lawful  wife,  and  take  in  her  place 
Anne  Boleyn,  whose  head  he  soon  after  cut  off,  what  did 
he  do  \  The  pope  would  not  grant  him  a  divorce,  so  he 
applied  to  the  universities  of  Europe — God  bless  the  mark ! 
(laughter) — and  they  said  of  course  he  could  put  away  his 
lawful  wife,  just  as  Martin  Luther  had  said  to  the  elector 
of  Brandenburg.  Clement  VII.  said :  "  You  will  never  put 
away  your  lawful  wife."  Henry  said :  "  I  will,  and  I  will 
take  England  from  the  Church's  fold."  The  pope  still 
said:  "No  power  on  earth  can  separate  you  from  your 
wife."  We  all  know  what  happened.  But  nowadays 
nearly  every  government  in  Europe  is  trying  to  force  its 
way  into  the  sanctuary,  and  teach  that  marriage  is  not  a 
sacrament,  but  a  sort  of  limited  liability  affair.  (Laughter.) 


264  The  Church  and  Civil  Government, 

They  say  ;  "  My  young  friend,  you  have  married  this 
young  girl ;  if  you  are  ever  tired  of  this  young  giil,  trump 
up  an  accusation  against  her,  and  drive  her  out  into  the 
world  and  take  another  girl  in  her  place."  This  was  the 
law  in  England,  but  the  law  of  divorce  they  never  dared 
to  introduce  in  Ii-eland.  Then  there  is  the  institution  of 
civil  marriages.  Those  who  patronize  them  go  to  the  re- 
gistrar. He  says  :  "Young  man,  are  you  going  to  marry 
this  young  woman  ?"  "  Yes,  sir."  "  Young  womafl,  are 
you  going  to  marry  this  young  man?"  "Yes,  sir." 
"  Then,  in  the  name  of  civil  society,  I  am  going  to  marry 
you.  Pay  me  half  a  crown."  (Great  laughter.)  Against 
this  the  Church  protests.  The  Protestant  Church  has 
bowed  down  and  accepted  the  law  of  divorce ;  and  if  a 
divorced  English  blackguard  comes  into  a  Protestant 
church  and  asks  to  be  married  again,  there  is  not  a  Pro- 
testant minister  who  would  dare  refuse  to  marry  him.  A 
Catholic  priest  would  not  marry  him  ;  but  if  he  did,  his 
bishop  would  excommunicate  him,  the  faithful  people 
would  shun  him,  and  the  curse  of  God  would  follow  him. 

Again,  the  civil  government  follows  the  Church  into  and 
intrudes  on  her  internal  arrangements.  Not  content  with 
making  conscription  laws,  from  which  there  is  no  exemp- 
tion— as  a  young  man  said  to  me :  "  When  a  boy  is  eighteen 
years  of  age  he  is  fit  to  be  a  soldier" — not  content  with 
imposing  taxes  so  great  that  in  Italy  a  cobbler  cannot 
mend  an  old  pair  of  shoes  without  first  paying  taxes  on  his 
awl — (laughter) — the  civil  governments  come  in  and  say 
to  the  people  :  "We  have  a  right  to  appoint  parish  priests  ; 
we  will  appoint  them,  and  put  you  in  jail  if  you  do  not 
support  them."  To  the  pope  they  say :  "  We  will  appoint 
bishops,  and  you  must  recognize  them."  The  man  they 
appoint  may  be  a  real  Jew,  or  a  Jew  like  the  blank  page 
that  is  between  the  Old  and  the  New  Testaments,  with 
nothing  written  on  it — (laughter) — or  he  might  be  an  atheist; 
but  the  state  may  want  to  make  him  a  bishop.  That  is 
what  the  pope  has  nowadays  to  protest  against  and  re- 
sist.   There  was  Bismarck  —  they  had  heard  of  him — or 


The  Church  and  Civil  Government.  265 

Beast-mark — (loud  laughter) — as  some  people  called  him. 
He  is  to-day  liUing  the  prisons  with  bishops  and  priests. 
If  the  bishop  appoints  a  good  priest  to  a  parish,  Bismarck 
shoves  him  into  prison,  and  then  seeks  to  put  a  blackguard 
in  his  place,  if  he  can  get  one  ;  or  if  he  cannot  get  such  a 
one,  he  tries  to  get  one  ordained  for  the  purpose.  The  En- 
glish Government  tried  to  get  a  little  power  of  that  sort  in. 
Ireland  when  the  Catholics  were  looking  for  emancipation. 
They  asked  for  a  veto  on  the  appointment  of  bishops.  A 
man  might  be  a  Francis  de  Sales,  a  Dr.  Doyle,  or  a  John 
MacHale — (great  applause) — and  the  better  man  he  was  and 
the  truer  man  to  God,  the  Church,  and  his  country,  the 
more  strongly  would  the  civil  government  come  in  and  say 
— if  they  had  got  the  veto — "  We  will  not  have  him  at  all." 
But  the  Catholics  of  Ireland  came  forward  and  said:  "  We 
will  not  have  any  such  veto  ;  we  will  not  have  any  such 
interference  with  our  Church  business.  We  would  rather 
wear  our  chains  for  twenty  years  longer,  if  necessary,  than 
have  the  fetters  of  the  veto  hanging  over  us."  (Applause.) 
And  the  Catholics  of  Ireland  have  gotten  their  reward.  It 
is  the  purest  portion  of  the  Catholic  Cliurch  ;  and  if  our 
fathers  had  not  been  so  true  in  protesting  the  veto,  the 
Catholics  of  Waterford  would  not  have  such  a  bishop  to- 
day as  the  Most  Rev.  John  Power.  (Loud  applause.)  It 
was  plain,  then,  that  the  Church  did  not  interfere  with  the 
civil  government,  but  the  civil  government  did  interfere 
with  the  Church.  Bismarck  qualifies  his  doings  by  saying 
he  is  afraid  of  the  Church.  He,  with  his  two  million  armed 
men  behind  him,  asks  :  "  Who  will  save  me  from  the  cruel 
bish  ops  ? "     (Laughter.) 

Is  it  not  clear  that  the  Catholic  Church  is  the  truest 
friend  of  man  for  time  and  eternity  ?  Is  she  not  the  first 
and  greatest  necessity  for  man  in  this  world  and  the  next ; 
the  surest,  firmest  guarantee  of  his  true  loyalty,  because 
she  founds  it  on  principle  ?  Is  she  not  his  firmest  friend 
for  eternity,  since  she  derives  her  power  from  God  ?  And 
if  ever  that  glorious  epoch  comes  when  the  two  will  be 
combined  in  their  highest  philosophical  and  historical  ex- 


266  The  Church  and  Civil  Oovernment. 

istence,  it  will  be  when  we  have  a  free  Church  in  a  free 
state.  Then  will  we  behold  one  of  the  greatest  glories  in 
Christendom,  such  as  she  had  once  possessed  in  the  olden 
days,  when  Brian  Boroihme  bore  the  sceptre  of  Ireland's 
nationality  on  Tara's  hills,  when  Irish  princes  respected 
and  defended  the  rights  of  the  Ii'ish  Church,  the  Irish 
bishops  maintained  Gospel  truths  and  the  greatness  of  the 
power  of  Irish  nationality.  (Loud  and  continued  ap- 
plause.) 


The  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age 
WE  Live  in. 


The  following  lecture  was  delivered  by  Father  Burke  in  the  Abbey  Church 
of  the  Holy  Cross,  Cork,  ia  aid  of  the  fund  for  discharging  the  debt  oa 
the  building.  The  chair  was  taken  by  the  Right  Rev.  Dr.  Moriarty,  Bi- 
shop of  Kerry,  who  said  :  '*  My  good  friends,  the  ceremony  of  intro- 
duction is  a  very  easy  one  when  friends  meet  and  are  welcome,  and  I  am 
sure  thit  out  of  the  countless  army  of  the  Church  there  is  not  one  of  any 
grade  or  any  order  more  welcome  to  you  than  Father  Burke.  (Hear,  hear, 
and  cheers.)  His  voice  was  heard  far  away  Theaccentsof  that  voice  were 
borne  hither  to  us  across  the  Atlantic  waves,  and  they  fanned  the  flamo 
of  your  love  for  faith  and  fatherland — (applause) — and  nowhere  have 
they  been  heard  with  greater  pleasure  than  they  shall  be  heard  to-night 
upon  the  strand  of  the  Lee.  (Renewed  applause.)  My  dear  friends,  I 
need  not  bespeak  a  kind  and  attentive  hearing  for  Father  Burke,  because 
I  am  sure  you  aie  all  most  anxious  to  listen  to  him."  (Hear,  hear.) 
Father  Burke  then  rose,  and,  when  the  acclamations  which  his  appear- 
ance elicited  had  subsided,  said  : 

IITY  LORD  BISHOP,  LADIES,  AND  GENTLEMEN: 
-^^  The  subject  upon  which  I  have  the  hardihood  this 
evening  to  address  you  is  '*  The  Catholic  Church  and  the 
Age  we  Live  in."  There  may,  perhaps,  be  some  amongst 
you  who  imagine  from  the  title  of  this  lecture  that  I  am 
come  here  to  praise  the  Catholic  Church  and  to  de- 
nounce the  age  we  live  in.  I  am  going  to  do  the  one  and 
not  to  do  the  other. 

One  of  the  common  errors  of  our  day  is  that  a  Catho- 
lic priest,  as  such,  must  make  it  his  especial  business  to 
denounce  this  age  of  ours.     I  myself  received  a  curious 

illustration  of  this  when  I  asked  a  poor  man  in  the  west  of 

m 


268    The  Catholic  Church  and  ths  Age  we  Live  iir. 

Ireland  some  time  ago  what  he  thought  was  the  proper 
badiiiejs  of  a  Catholic  priest.  He  scratciied  Lis  head, 
thoagiit  for  a  few  mom.eiits,  and  tken :  "I  su]>pose,  your 
reverence,"  said  he,  ''the  proper  business  of  a  Catholic 
priest  is  to  tell  us  all  we  are  going  to  tlie  devil"  (Laughter.) 
Now,  I  do  not  denounce  the  age  we  live  in.  1  am  not  such 
an  ungrateful  son  of  the  century  that  bore  me.  Born  wit^iln 
this  nineteenth  century,  destined,  in  all  probability  not  to 
see  its  close,  like  your  bishop,  a  child  of  this  age,  I  rather 
admire  tliis  nineteenth  century.  I  lind  much  that  is  grand 
and  admirable  in  the  workings  of  this  century.  I  compare 
it  with  the  eighteenth  century,  and  with  the  seventeenth, 
and  I  hold  that  this  nineteenth  age  of  ours  is  far  more 
glorious  than  either  of  its  predecessors.  For,  if  it  had 
nothing  else  to  distinguish  it,  and  to  make  it  a  memorable 
epoch  in  the  history  of  the  world,  there  are  two  great  facta. 
The  first  of  these  (and  the  greatest  glory  of  it  belongs  to  the 
Bpirit  of  justice  of  the  nineteenth  century)  was  the  Catholic 
emancipation  of  Ireland.  O  glorious  emancipation  !  the 
upraising  of  an  entire  people,  all  the  more  glorious  that 
those  chains  were  not  stricken  from  the  hand  of  Ireland  hj 
brute  force,  but  that  they  were  shaken  off  by  the  peaceful 
agitation  of  a  united  people,  by  an  appeal,  which  was 
acknowledged  by  our  age,  to  the  eternal  principles  of  Justice. 
(Applause.) 

The  second  great  and  glorious  fact  of  this  century  of 
ourg  is  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  Southern  States  of 
United  America,  Now,  when  we  reflect  upon  the  awful 
nature  of  such  an  institution  as  this,  that  delivered  a  man 
as  bondsman  to  his  fellow-man,  reducing  him  to  the  level 
of  the  brute  beast,  I  hold  that  the  grand  sense  of  justice 
that  prevailed  in  the  utter  abolition  of  slavery,  that  nerved 
the  arms  of  the  North  and  prevailed  upon  the  bright  intel- 
ligence of  the  men  of  the  Southern  States  of  America — 
than  whom  none  more  cordially  accept  the  abolition  of 
slavery — I  hold  that  this  second  fact  marks  our  age  as 
an  epoch  to  be  considered  glorious  in  all  the  future  history 
of  time.    (Hear,  Lear.)    More  than  this,  my  friends,  I  see 


^' 


The  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age  we  Live  in.     269 

in  V.ds  nineteenth,  century  of  ours  a  march  tlirough  the 
lieids  of  scientific  research  the  most  glorious  that  the 
world  ever  witnessed  in  any  age  since  its  creation.  I  see 
the  power  of  the  human  mind  asserting  itself  over  matter 
in  its  keenest,  subtlest,  most  terrific,  and  almost  its  spiritual 
form — space  annihilated  by  our  railway  system  ;  the  very 
elements,  so  effected  for  our  destruction,  coerced  under 
scientific  control  to  be  the  humble  and  great  servant  of 
man,  and  of  man' s  civilization  ;  the  lightning  caught  from 
the  clouds  of  heaven  and  made  the  messenger  of  human 
thought,  when  mind  speaks  to  mind  by  the  trembling 
telegraph  wire,  which  goes  round  and  round  the  earth 
and  under  the  depths  of  the  sea.  (Applause.)  Compare 
the  results  of  the  scientific  research  and  of  the  inductive 
philosophy  of  our  age ;  take  the  two  great  facts  that  I 
have  mentioned — Catholic  emancipation  and  the  abolition 
of  slavery — and  if  our  age  had  nothing  more  than  these  to 
boast  of,  I  hold  that  this  nineteenth  century  of  ours  may 
be  written  in  letters  and  characters  of  gold  upon  the  annals 
of  the  world's  history.     (Applause.) 

But,  my  friends,  you  may  admire  much  of  a  man — yon 
may  have  a  friend  and  you  may  admire  his  genius,  the 
brilliancy  of  his  imagination,  the  grandeur  of  his  intellect, 
the  harmony  of  his  voice,  the  softness  and  tenderness  of 
his  heart ;  and  yet,  if  you  be  a  true  friend  of  the  man,  you 
will  not  blind  your  eyes  to  his  defects,  you  will  not  allow 
your  friendship  and  love  for  him  to  carry  you  so  far  into 
blind  devotion  as  to  set  him  up  as  an  idol  and  think  him 
all  perfect.  You  will  rather,  because  of  your  friendship 
and  because  of  your  admiration  for  him,  all  the  more  keenly 
deplore  the  blemishes  and  imperfections  that  spoil  so  fair 
a  character.  And  even  so,  child  of  the  nineteenth  century 
smitten  with  admiration  for  the  age  of  which  I  am  a  son,  I 
love  my  fellow- men  too  well,  I  love  the  society  to  which  I 
belong  too  well,  I  have  too  keen  an  interest  in  its  welfare, 
to  allow  that  admiration  and  that  love  to  blind  me  to  the 
grave  faults  and  serious  shortcomings  of  this  age.  What 
are  these  ?    They  are,  my  friends,  principally  to  be  found 


270    The  CAtnoLic  Church  and  the  Aqe  we  Live  jjv. 

in  the  great  leading  features  of  our  intellectual  life,  of  our 
moral  life,  of  our  social  life,  and  of  our  political  life  ;  and 
when  I  take  these  four,  I  think  I  have  exhausted  all  that 
makes  up  the  true  life  of  a  civilized  people.  I  have  grave 
faults  to  tind  with  this  century  in  its  intellectual  life. 
I  have  grave  faults  to  find  with  it  in  its  moral  life,  in 
its  social  life,  and  in  its  political  life.  But  I  go  farther 
than  this  ;  I  hold,  judging  by  the  light  of  history  and  of 
experience,  and  without  intending  to  say  a  word  that  would 
offend  any  man,  no  matter  of  what  religious  persuasion  he 
may  be,  I  am  convinced  unto  the  very  marrow  of  my  intel- 
ligence that  the  Catholic  Church  and  the  Catholic  religion 
is  the  only  remedy  for  the  evils  which  I  am  about  to  put 
before  you,  and  is  the  only  principle  and  the  only  system 
that  can  save  this  nineteenth  century  from  the  utter  dis- 
ruption and  ruin  that  compose  society.     (Applause.) 

It  is  a  scientific  age  ;  who  can  doubt  it  ?  It  is  a  scientific 
age,  an  age  of  research,  an  age  when  every  man  is  trying  to 
push  intellectual  activity  to  its  very  highest  summit  in 
whatever  walk  of  life  he  may  be.  It  is  an  age  of  the  best 
engineers,  an  age  of  the  greatest  astronomers,  an  age  of  the 
greatest  musicians — I  will  not  say,  for  I  cannot,  of  the 
greatest  painters  and  sculptors ;  but  in  the  more  material 
pursuits  of  science  it  is  pre-eminently  an  age  of  scientific 
research  and  of  scientific  excellence.  Every  man  is  trying 
to  be  the  best  man  at  liis  own  craft,  whatever  it  be.  "I 
remember  a  time,  your  reverence,"  a  poor  Galway  piper 
said  to  me,  "when  half  a  dozen  tunes,  jigs,  and  reels  would 
be  enough  to  keep  a  poor  decent  man  vsdth  a  bit  in  his 
mouth  and  a  coat  on  his  back  ;  but  now  if  you  do  not  play 
all  the  waltzes  for  them,  and  all  sorts  of  things,  they  will 
not  listen  to  you  at  all.  (Laughter.)  I  thought,  sir,  that  my 
fether  was  a  great  piper  entirely,  and  he  never  went  be- 
yond the  *  Humors  of  Glin.'  (Great  laughter.)  But,  your 
reverence,"  says  he,  "it  is  not  alone  that  I  must  hnve  all 
the  jigs  that  ever  was  known  to  the  people  of  Ireland,  but 
I  must  have  all  the  foreign  tunes  as  well."  (T?oars  of 
liaughter.)    So  that  even  the  humble  musician  of  the  class 


The  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age  wf  Live  in.     271 

of  which  I  have  been  speaking  must  be  a  very  magnificent 
piper  nowadays  even  to  be  able  to  earn  his  bread. 
(Applause.) 

But,  my  friends,  we  must  never  confound  science,  in 
the  exact  sciences,  we  must  never  confound  the  material 
conclusions  of  science,  which  tell  so  powerfully  upon  the 
comforts  and  luxuries  of  life,  with  that  higher  speculative 
philosophy,  without  going  into  the  region  of  pure  thought, 
of  pure  analysis,  that  undertakes  the  investigation  of  the 
most  serious  and  most  awful  questions,  such  as  the  origin 
of  man,  the  destiny  of  man,  the  powers  of  mind,  the  mys- 
terious harmony  of  free  will,  with  the  agencies  acting  upon 
man.  These  are  questions  that  belong  to  the  highest 
philosophy,  and  one  of  the  great  mistakes  of  our  age  is 
that  the  man  who  is  most  excellent  in  scientific  research, 
in  judging  of  nature  and  of  nature's  laws,  in  examining 
the  phenomena  that  lie  around  him,  in  sounding  the 
depths  of  the  realm  of  material  science — that  such  a  man, 
because  of  his  excellence  in  this  respect,  because  he  is  a 
first-class  engineer  or  a  great  astronomer,  or  because  he 
invents  some  new  way  of  conveying  a  telegraphic  message, 
or  because  he  discovers  a  new  planet  by  the  aid  of  a  tele- 
scope of  strange  power — that  such  a  man  is  tempted,  in 
the  intoxication  of  scientific  success,  to  pass  into  the 
realms  of  speculative  philosophy,  and  with  perfect  free- 
dom judge  of  matters  that  lie  far  beyond  the  ken  of 
human  sense,  far  beyond  the  evidences  of  mere  human 
science.  Thus  it  is  that  the  eminent  physicists  and  scien- 
tists of  our  day,  pre-eminent  as  they  are  as  long  as  they 
keep  themselves  within  their  own  sphere— the  surgeon 
with  his  scalpel,  the  astronomer  with  his  telescope,  the 
engineer  with  his  steam-engine,  the  electrician  with  his 
appliances  of  electricity— excellent  as  they  are  in  all  this, 
no  sooner  do  they  go  within  the  limits  of  speculative 
philosophy  than  we  find  them  stumbling  in  the  most  de- 
plorable manner  to  the  most  lamentable  conclusions.  And 
in  this  intellectual,  purely  intellectual,  philosophy,  in  this 
speculation,  in  which  the  human  mind  labors  and  strains 


272     Thw  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age  we  Live  in. 

with  eager  desire  to  gain  an  atmosphere  beyond  its  nature, 
the  nineteenth  century  fails,  and  men  of  our  age  have 
asked  us  to  accept,  as  a  solution  of  the  greatest  of  all 
problems,  the  most  degrading  theory  that  ever  was  pro- 
pounded to  man.     (Applause.) 

One  of  the  greatest  and  deepest  thinkers  of  our  day  has 
come  forward  and  asked  the  intellectual  world  to  accept 
the  astounding  conclusion  that  man — man  with  his  human 
language,  man  with  his  human  intellect,  man  with  hia 
glorious  freedom  of  will,  man  with  his  fund  of  affection, 
and  tenderness,  and  strength  of  heart,  man  with  so  much 
that  is  noble  in  him,  brought  out  even  by  the  very  spirit 
of  our  age,  man  who  is  asserting  the  complete  dominion  of 
mind  over  all  the  material  elements  of  nature — that  this 
man  is  nothing  more  than  a  development  of  an  ugly, 
brutal,  grinning  monkey  !  (Laughter  and  cheers.)  He 
tells  us  that  if  we  want  to  tra<je  our  origin  we  must  not 
look  up  but  look  down ;  that  if  we  do  look  up  at  all  we 
must  not  look  higher  than  the  first  branches  of  tlie  forest 
tree.  (Great  laughter.)  Christian  philosophy,  enlightened 
by  the  light  that  never  was  created,  the  light  that  comes 
forth  from  a  height  inaccessible,  from  the  Father  of  light, 
leads  the  man  of  to-day  to  the  man  of  yesterday,  or  the 
day  before,  and  from  him  to  the  man  who  went  before  him, 
and  so  on  and  on,  higher  and  higher  still,  to  the  man  of 
remote  ages,  who  also  was  descended  from  another,  and 
he  again  from  another,  and  another,  and  another,  until  we 
come  to  the  first  true  and  grand  man,  who,  as  the  Evange- 
list says,  "was  from  God."     (Applause.) 

0  grand  philosophy  1  partly  recognized  even  by  the 
imperfect  light  of  the  pagan  of  old,  of  whom  the  poet  said : 
"Though  we  know  Him  not.  He  who  created  us  has  given 
us  a  noble  countenance  capable  of  looking  up."  But 
Darwin  sa3^s  :  "No,  I  will  not  alk)w  you  to  look  up  to 
heaven  ;  the  highest  aspiration  I  will  permit  you  is,  if  you 
want  a  genealogical  tree,  you  must  go  to  tlie  gum-tree." 
Did  you  ever  hear  a  song  called  "  Possum  up  a  gum-tree"  1 
(Cheers  and  laughter.)  Look  at  him  in  the  upper  branches 


The  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age  we  Live  in.    273 

with  a  cocoanut  in  his  paw.  (Much  laughter.)  There  he 
sits,  swaying  to  the  breeze  that  passes  through  the  forest, 
jabbering  brutal,  unintelligible  sounds,  gnawing  at  the 
cocoanut  until  he  gets  to  the  precious  kernel,  or  milk,  that 
is  inside.  His  tail  is  twined  round  a  branch  of  the 
tree  in  order  that  he  may  not  fall  off — a  vile,  unclean  thing. 
Professor  Darwin  comes  out  with  a  bland  smile  and  says  : 
"My  dear  philosopher,  my  dear  elegant  lady  so  refined, 
my  dear  bishop  or  priest,  this  animal  does  not  happen  to 
be  your  grandfather — (roars  of  laughter) — but  he  is  one  of 
the  series  of  grandfathers.  (Intense  merriment.)  Go  back 
far  enough  and  you  will  have  to  say  to  this  creature  :  '  So 
you  are  the  one  that  Almighty  God  commanded  me  to 
honor  and  to  love!'"  (Great  applause.)  Would  you 
like  to  know  what  the  argument  of  the  professor  is  ?  It  is 
simply  this  :  "I  have  analyzed  the  monkey,"  he  says, 
*'and  I  find  that  his  jaw-bones  are  very  like  the  jaw-bones 
of  a  man — (laughter) — that  the  osfrontis,  or  forehead  bone, 
is  formed  so  that  it  admits  the  same  amount  of  matter  that 
tlie  human  skull  does  of  brain.  And  so,"  he  goes  on, 
"  since  they  are  so  alike,  I  conclude  that  man  is  nothing 
more  than  the  develojjment  of  the  ape."  Now,  on  the 
same  theory,  if  you  take  an  animal  that  I  suppose  I  may 
not  name  here,  on  account  of  so  many  ladies  being  present 
— there  is  a  little  animal  that  sometimes  infests  people' s 
houses  in  the  summer,  and  when  they  are  not  kept  very 
clean  ;  a  small  creature  that  jumps  very  high.  (Laughter.) 
Now,  they  say  that  if  you  put  that  little  domestic  animal 
under  a  strong  magnifying-glass  you  will  find  that  he  is 
very  like  an  elephant.  Therefore,  on  the  Darwinian 
theory,  the  elephant  is  but  a  development  of  the — well,  I 
must  name  him — of  the  flea  !  (Cheers  and  laughter.)  It 
lies  here  :  to  go  from  the  mere  material  evidence  of  simi- 
larity, from  that  which  is  merely  material,  to  climb  up  into 
the  purely  intellectual,  the  purely  spiritual,  and,  with 
audacity  unheard  of,  to  make  a  revelation  as  to  the  origin 
of  man  out  of  the  jaw-bone  of  a  monkey  ! 

My  friends,  how  are  we  to  remedy  this  gross  intellectual 


274    Tre  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age  we  Live  in. 

error  ?    For  what  a  degrading  system  it  is  !  what  a  degra- 
dation for  man  to  be  told  this  ;  and  this  in  an  age  when 
men  are  so  proud  that  they  repudiate  with  scorn  the  slight- 
est interference  with  their  intelligence,  with  their  minds, 
if  that  interference  comes  from  God,  or  in  the  name  of  God  ! 
The  man  of  the  day,  the  intellectual  man  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  says  to  the  priest :  "  AVhat !  ask  me  to  go  to  con- 
fession!    Ask  me  thus  to  humble  myseK!     Nothing  of 
the  kind.     Ask  me  to  believe  in  the  truths  of  the  Catholic 
religion,  which  you  tell  me  you  preach  in  the  name  of  God  ! 
I  will    not  do    it.     My  intelligence    has    been    too  well 
matured,  too  well  taught,  too  well  trained  to  believe  such 
tilings."     But  then  he  turns  round  and  says  to  Darwin: 
"  I  will  believe  what  you  tell  me  in  the  name  of  an  ape, 
for  I  am  nothing  better  than  an  ape."    (Cheers  and  laugh- 
ter.)   My  friends,  what  is  the  remedy  for  this  intellectual 
degradation  that  enters  so  largely  also  into  the  moral  life 
of  man  \    It  is  a  law  of  nature,  as  well  as  a  revealed  law, 
that  the  child  should  honor  his  father  and  his  mother. 
The  God  of  nature  as  well  as  the  God  of  revelation  has 
put  this  as  a  first  principle  into  the  mind  of  every  child. 
Does  not  this  theory  that  I  speak  of,  this  degrading  specu- 
lative philosophy,  does  it  not  give  the  lie  to  this  law  of 
nature  ?    Am  I  to  be  called  upon  to  honor  those  who  went 
before  me,  father    and    mother,  grandfather  and  grand- 
mother, whilst  my  philosophy  teaches  me  that  they  are  a 
step  nearer  to  the  primeval  ape  than  I?   (Hear,  hear.)   Ac- 
cording to  this  theory  the  human  race  is  becoming  more 
perfect  as  it  goes  on  ;  consequently,  it  must  lose  all  reve- 
rence for  what  is  past.     No,  if  I  could  get  my  mind  to  be- 
lieve in  the  speculative    philosophy  of    the    nineteenth 
century,  in  the  name  of  civilization  itself,  and  in  the  name 
of  my  own  self-respect,  which  I  believe  is  due  to  myself,  I 
would  consider  it  my  duty  to  turn  my  back  upon  father 
and   mother  and    despise    them.     (Cheers.)    How,  I  say 
again,  are  we   to  remedy  this  great    evil?     0  my   dear 
friends  1  what  remedy  have  we  for  it  except  the  religion 
which  alone,  with  the  authority  of  God,  in  the  name  of 


Thu  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age  we  Live  in,    275 

God,  with  a  history  traced  distinctly  up  to  God  made  man 
for  lis,  to  our  Divine  Lord — a  religion  which  comes  to  us 
from  the  open  grave  that  was  there  in  the  garden  on  that 
Easter  morning,  when  they  went  to  seek  for  tlie  living 
amongst  the  dead — the  religion  of  a  Church  coming  down 
to  us  with  her  credentials  in  her  hands,  with  the  sign  of 
truth  upon  her  both  in  the  promise  of  her  Founder  and  in 
the  unchanging  spirit  with  which  she  has  preached  the 
same  Gospel  for  generations — a  religion  which  gives  proof 
of  the  divinity  of  its  origin  in  the  power  which  it  exercises 
over  the  minds,  and  hearts,  and  lives  of  those  who  profess 
it — a  religion  coming  with  all  the  power  of  divine  reve- 
lation, with  all  the  strength  of  divine  authority,  and 
teaching  the  scientific  man  that  which  religion  alone  can 
teach  him,  which  no  science  or  wisdom  of  man  has  ever 
been  able  to  fathom  and  reveal — the  mystery  of  man's 
origin,  of  man's  history,  and  of  man's  destiny  in  the 
future?     (Loud  applause.) 

It  will,  perhaps,  be  said :  "But  if  the  scientific  man  is 
also  a  Catliolic,  a  man  of  faith,  he  will  not  be  able  to  push 
his  researches,  he  will  not  have  freedom,  he  will  be  afraid 
that  he  may  discover  something  or  other  that  may  upset 
his  religion."  My  dear  friends,  this  objection  is  made  by 
those  who  are  without  faith,  and  who  presume  that  no 
such  virtue  as  faith  exists.  How  can  I  be  afraid,  if  I  am 
a  scientific  man,  that  any  discovery  or  conclusion  of  mine 
will  upset  my  religion,  if  that  religion  be  in  my  mind  as 
an  absolute  certainty  of  divine  faith  ?  And  if  I  know 
more  surely  than  I  know  my  own  existence  that  no  form 
of  natural  science  or  natural  truth  can  upset  or  shake  one 
principle  of  that  divine  faith  which  is  in  my  mind,  I  am 
all  the  more  free  to  engage  in  those  researches.  If  Pro- 
fessor Darwin,  for  example,  became  a  Catholic,  do  you  not 
think  he  would  be  just  as  well  able  to  continue  Tiis  exam- 
inations of  the  monkey  as  he  is  now  ?  (Laughter.)  Do  you 
imagine  that  because  he  is  a  Catholic  he  should  have  to 
drop  the  monkeys  and  excuse  himself  from  further 
encLuiry  by  saying :  "I  must  drop  this  investigation  now, 


276    The  Catholig  Cnuncn  and  the  Age  we  Live  in. 

for  ix  I  go  on  considering  these  monkeys,  liow  do  I  know 
but  I  may  discover  they  are  men"?  (Laughter.)  On  the 
other  hand,  who  is  so  free  to  go  out  into  the  field  of 
scientific  research  as  the  man  whose  mind  and  intelligence 
rest  with  perfect  intellectual  satisfaction  upon  the  certainty 
of  his  faith?  In  every  science  the  very  first  thing  that  is 
demanded,  as  a  necessary  condition  to  the  pursuit  of  that 
science,  is  some  first  principle  that  is  admitted  as  such. 
When  Euclid  began  his  investigation  of  geometry  he 
found  it  necessary  to  make  two  or  three  postulates.  "  We 
cannot  go  on,"  said  he,  "  we  cannot  argue  a  single  propo- 
sition, unless  you  admit  something  to  be  true  without  my 
proving  it." 

And  so  it  is  of  all  the  sciences.  Philosophy  itself  de- 
mands some  one  admitted  principle,  some  admitted  truth, 
upon  which  it  can  build  up  an  edifice  of  its  own  truth.  So, 
in  like  manner,  no  man  is  so  free,  so  unfettered,  so  unen- 
cumbered for  scientific  research  as  the  man  whose  mind 
and  soul  rest  upon  the  certainty  of  divine  faith.  (Hear, 
hear.)  He  has  no  anxiety,  he  has  no  fear;  he  says: 
"  Whatever  I  discover  of  science  will  not  interfere  with 
my  religion  ;  for  it  cannot  contradict  that  religion,  because 
I  know  my  religion  to  be  true,  I  know  it  to  come  from 
God,  and  that  God  who  has  revealed  that  religion  will  not 
contradict  Himself  and  His  own  truth  in  the  sphere  of 
natural  and  scientific  investigation."  And,  therefore,  he  is 
unencumbered  with  fears  and  doubts.  This  is  the  remark 
that  Mllner  makes  in  his  "  History  of  Latin  Christianity." 
Speaking  of  Thomas  of  Aquin,  he  says:  "No  man  ever 
lived  that  investigated  more  fearlessly  even  the  most  awful 
questions  than  did  this  great  saint.  No  atheist  that  ever 
was  born  went  more  fearlessly  into  the  question  of  the  ex- 
istence of  God,  or  threw  out  more  terrible  arguments 
against  it  than  St.  Thomas."  Well,  he  explained  it  in 
this  way :  He  was  fearless,  because  his  own  soul  rested 
upon  the  immutable  truths  of  his  religion  and  his  faith. 
He  knew  nothing  could  interfere  with  them.  No  discovery 
or  argument  could  upset  them,  and  therefore  he  went  out 


The  Catholio  Church  and  the  Age  we  Live  in.    277 

with  a  sense  of  utter  security,  and  fearlessly  pushed  his 
enquiries  into  the  most  awful  questions  ever  presented  to 
the  mind  of  man. 

If  St.  Thomas  had  not  that  absolute  Catholic  faith 
which  the  Catholic  Church  alone  has,  he  would  be  afraid 
to  institute  those  enquiries ;  he  would  say  to  himself : 
*' Who  knows  but  I  may  discover  some  argument  or  fact 
or  somc^tliing  that  may  upset  my  religion  f"'  He  would  be 
afraid  to  go  on  for  fear  of  disturbing  the  peace  of  his  own 
mind.  Thus,  I  say,  the  Catholic  Church  is  not  afraid  of 
scientific  investigations.  She  is  the  best  friend  of  the  age  ; 
she  is  the  surest  guardian  of  it ;  and,  therefore,  I  hold 
that  she  is  necessary  to  the  spirit  of  our  age,  and  to  the 
mind  of  our  age,  and  to  the  cause  of  the  man  of  science. 

Oh !  but  it  will  be  said  (before  we  leave  this  branch  of 
our  consideration) — oh !  but  it  will  be  said :  "  How  do  you 
say  the  Catholic  Church  is  in  favor  of  science  ?  How  can 
you  say  she  imposes  no  trammels  upon  scientific  men, 
upon  the  researches  of  philosophers,  astronomers,  and  the 
like  ?  Why,  she  put  Galileo  in  prison  because  he  made 
out  that  the  earth  moved  and  that  the  sun  stood  still." 
My  dear  friends,  this  is  a  big  question  to  go  into,  and  it 
has  been  discussed  so  often  that  it  is  not  necessary  for  me 
here  to  go  into  it ;  but  this  I  wUl  say  :  The  two  great  facts 
against  the  Catholic  Church  which  are  lugged  in  day  after 
day  to  accuse  her  of  hostility  to  science  are  her  treatment 
of  Copernicus,  the  great  astronomer,  and  her  treatment  of 
Galileo.  With  regard  to  the  first,  he  was  a  priest  of  the 
diocese  of  Ermeland,  in  Prussia.  He  certainly  was  one  of 
the  gi-eatest  astronomers — ^perhaps  the  greatest — that  ever 
lived.  His  system  revolutionized  all  that  went  before  it  in 
the  magnificent  science  of  astronomy.  And  men  say  in 
this  nineteenth  century  that  the  Catholic  Church  was  op- 
posed to  him  ;  that  she  fettered  him  ;  that  she  did  not  per- 
mit him  to  place  the  result  of  his  researches  in  the  full 
light  of  the  world,  and  treated  him  badly.  Now,  listen  to 
how  Copernicus  was  ill-treated  by  the  Catholic  Church. 
He  was  made  vicar-general  of  the  diocese  in  which  he 


278     The  Catholic  Church  axd  the  Age  we  Live  iir. 

lived,  and  his  uume  was  put  forward  to  be  made  a  bishop 
of  the  diocese.  (xVpplause.)  There  was  no  objection 
against  the  man.  The  two  men  who  protected  him  and 
encouraged  hi.ii  to  publish  his  books  and  go  on  with  his 
discoveries  were  Cardinal  Nicholas  Scliomberg  and  the 
Bishop  of  Colomb — a  cardinal  and  a  bishop  were  his  dear- 
est friends,  and  they  encouraged  him  to  bring  out  his 
books.  He  was  honored  by  the  Church  to  the  last  day  of 
his  life,  and  I  may  as  well  mention  here  now  that  it  was 
in  Ms  time  Martin  Luther  began  to  preach  Protestantism 
in  Germany ;  and  one  of  the  greatest  and  stanchest  of 
his  enemies — one  of  the  first — was  Copernicus,  the  great 
philosoplier.  (Cheers.)  So  if  that  man  was  treated  badly 
by  the  Church,  all  I  can  say  is  this  :  I  am  perfectly  will- 
ing to  submit  to  such  treatment  myself  in  the  morning. 
(Laughter  and  loud  cheers.)  TTow,  with  regard  to  Galileo, 
I  may  as  well  remark  at  once  to  you,  it  is  true  that  Galileo 
was  put  into  a  kind  of  imprisonment.  He  was  locked  up, 
the  same,  perhaps,  as  the  Bishop  of  Paderborn,  in  Prus- 
sia, was  locked  up  the  other  day  by  Prince  Bismarck,  the 
same  as  if  he  had  been  caught  picking  pockets  or  cutting 
somebody's  throat.     (Laughter.) 

Now,  everybody  acknowledges  that  takes  the  trouble 
of  reading  history  at  all  that  the  locking-up  of  Galileo 
and  his  imprisonment  meant  simply  this:  tliat  he  was 
lodged  in  a  beautiful  house  with  a  large  garden  to  it,  and 
was  requested  not  to  go  out  till  the  affair  was  settled. 
Then  he  said  his  health  was  bad,  and  his  doctors  ordered 
him  to  be  removed  to  Padua.  And  what  sort  of  a  prison 
do  you  think  they  flung  him  into  there  ?  It  was  the  arch- 
bishop' a  house,  and  he  had  the  run  of  it — (great  laughter) — 
including  the  run  of  the  kitchen.  (More  laughter.)  But 
was  it  Galileo' s  scientific  opinions  and  researches  that  were 
condemned  ?  That  is  the  question.  I  say  it  was  not — (ap- 
plause)— and  I  will  give  you  a  very  simple  fact  in  proof  of 
it.  When  Galileo's  cause  was  under  examination  there 
was  a  very  learned  man  applied  to  by  a  Catholic  bi- 
shop, who  wrote  to  ask  him  if  he  thought  that  Galileo 


^f 


The  Vatwoztc  VstmcR  and  tjete  Age  we  Live  jw.    5^79 

WBS  right  in  his  ustronomical  eoncluisioiis.  Tlie  Carmelite 
came  out  with  a  long  essay  in  reply.  He  said:  '*H.e  is 
Tight ;  his  system  is  the  right  one.  I  know  it  and  can  prove 
it"  ;  and  he  endorsed  every  single  scientific  conclusion  of 
Oalileo.  He  addressed  this  letter,  and  he  wrote  to  the 
general  of  his  order,  who  was  living  in  Rome  under  the 
pope's  nose.  (Laughter.)  The  letter  was  published  with 
the  permission  of  the  Roman  authorities,  and  the  man  that 
published  that  letter  identified  himself  with  C^alileo  pub- 
licly, and  was  never  censured  nor  corrected  by  the  Catho- 
lic Church.  (Loud  -applause.)  What  Is  the  true  reason  of 
Galileo's  imprisonment?  Read  the  Edinburgh  *'Encyclo- 
pcedia."  It  is  written  by  Scotchmen,  und  Scotchmen  are 
not  as  a  rule  noted  for  their  tenderness  to  the  Catholic 
Ohurch;  but  they  have  acknowledged,  though  they  are 
Protestants,  that  it  was  not  for  his  scientific  researches  or 
^conclusions  Galileo  was  imprisoned,  but  it  was  that  he 
was  well  known  to  be  a  man  hostile  to  the  Catholic  faith, 
land  that  there  was  that  concealed  iu  the  spirit  of  his  writ- 
ings and  in  the  man"'g  conduct  that  alarmed  the  Church 
and  alarmed  the  authorities  of  the  time  in  his  regard. 
(Applau-se.)  So  much  for  this  and  many  other  arguments 
that  are  brought  against  the  Church.  It  is  easy  to  over- 
throw them.  The  world  has  been  Hinging  mud  at  us  for 
the  last  sixteen  hundred  years.  Tlie  only  wonder  is  that 
■we  are  not  buried  long  ago  under  a  mountain  of  this  muck 
of  falsehood  which  they  are  for  ever  heaping  upon  us ; 
and  in  this  nineteenth  century  men  are  still  ransacking 
the  libi^ries  of  Europe,  reading  liistory  and  investigating 
«8very  single  fact  in  the  vain  pursuit  of  some  doctrinal  lie, 
that  they  may  put  'it  on  the  face  of  the  Catliolic  Church, 
snd  so  hold  her  up  as  a  liar  before  the  nations.  That  lie 
never  wi'l  be  discovered.     (Loud  cheers.) 

Well,  my  friends,  the  moral  life  of  this  grand  age  of 
ours — which  I  certainly  love,  and,  in  many  respects,  which 
I  deeply  admire — the  moral  life  of  our  age  is  injured  at 
its  very  root  by  the  bh^w  that  has  been  struck  at  the  sanc- 
tity and  inviolability  of  Christian  marriage.    Now,  let  me 


\ 


280    The  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age  we  Live  in, 

remark  to  yon  at  once,  the  keystone  of  the  whole  arch  of 
human  society  is  the  sanctity  of  the  maniage  tie.  (Ap- 
plause.) It  is  in  the  sanctity  of  matrimony  that  the  foun- 
tains of  Christian  life  are  sanctified.  Tlie  family  depends 
upon  the  inviolability  of  the  marriage  tie ;  the  city,  the 
nation,  depends  on  the  family.  And  what  is  the  world 
but  an  aggregate  of  all  nations  %  When  you  have  traced 
human  society  up  to  its  source  you  must  lay  your  hand 
upon  that  most  sacred  bond  that  makes  the  husband  faith- 
ful even  unto  death  to  the  wife  of  his  bosom,  and  that 
places  the  woman  in  the  grand  and  unalterable  security 
of  her  position  as  wife  and  mother. 

It  is  true  that,  in  the  pagan  times  of  old,  woman  was  bufc 
a  slave.  In  Greece  and  Rome,  before  the  light  of  the  Gospel 
came  upon  them,  woman  was  merely  the  slave  of  man — his 
toy  and  his  delight  as  long  as  the  fire  of  youth  was  in  her 
eye  and  the  bloom  of  beauty  on  her  cheek  %  but  when  she 
grew  old  or  infirm,  the  Roman  poet  describes,  in  forcible 
but  necessarily  brutal  language,  the  male  slave  or  servant 
of  the  house  coming  to  the  mother  of  the  children,  of  his 
master's  children,  and  saying  to  her  on  his  master's  behalf : 
"Your  face  has  grown  pale,  and  your  eyes  have  lost  their 
lustre — begone  1  raj  master  has  found  one  younger  and 
fairer  than  you — begone."  She  was  thrust  out  of  doors,  a 
dishonored  and  homeless  woman,  leaving  her  children  be- 
hind her,  never  to  see  them  again,  and  going  out  into  the 
world  without  a  home  to  shelter  her  or  an  arm  to  protect 
her.  Such  is  her  position  to-day  in  the  nation  that  never 
opened  its  eyes  to  the  Gospel  nor  bowed  down  before  the 
cross.  But  when  the  Son  of  God  came  He  took  a  woman 
for  His  Mother,  the  Virgin  of  virgins.  He  made  that  wo- 
man the  greatest  of  all  His  creatures  in  heaven  or  upon 
earth  ;  neither  in  heaven  nor  on  earth  was  there  anything 
like  Mary  ever  seen  before,  and  neither  in  heaven  nor  upon 
earth  shall  her  equal  be  found  among  the  creatures  of  God 
for  all  eternity.  (Cheers.)  And  He,  for  her  sake,  and  in  her, 
raised  woman  from  the  degradation  of  her  pagan  slavery. 
He  made  her  the  equal  and  the  partner  of  the  husband  who 


The  Vatholw  Church  and  the  Age  we  Live  in.    381 

gave  her  his  young  heart  and  hand.  He  sanctified  her,  and 
threw  over  her  the  aegis  of  HJ^  own  divine  protection.  He 
sat  down  at  Cana,  in  Galilee,  at  the  marriage  feast,  and 
with  His  own  omnipotent  liand  blessed  the  husband  and 
wife,  and  afterwards  ratitied  that  blessing  by  declaring  that 
the  bond  thus  linked  should  never  be  broken — "  That  which 
God  has  joined  together  let  no  iuhb.  rend  asunder."  Thus 
woman  became  th<3  queen  of  her  household ;  her  position 
was  secured ;  the  love  of  her  husband  became  th<e  inalien- 
able property  of  the  wife.  Mau  was  bound  to  her  with  a 
fidelity  designated  by  the  love  and  the  fidelity  with  which 
Christ  is  bound  by  the  espousals  of  divine  gra«e  to  His 
Church..  She  was  left  the  undisputed  mistress  of  her  house, 
as  the  mother  of  her  children,  entrusted  with  their  educa- 
tion and  the  formation  of  their  chai'acfeer,  and  she  became 
the  mother  of  the  man  as  well  as  of  the  child.  The  Church 
of  God  protecting  and  sanctifying  that  marriage  tie,  and 
conserving  "the  Great  Sacrament,"  as  Saint  Paul  calls  it, 
that  God. put  in  her  hands,  the  Chiistian  woman  rose  to 
the  fullest  of  her  rights  in  the  magnificent  fidelity  of  her 
husband  and  the  sanctity  of  marriage-    (Loud  cheers.) 

But  a  change  has  come  upon  the  moral  spirit  of  the 
age.  Like  Samson  laying  hold  of  the  pillars  that  upheld 
the  temple,  and  swaying  them  to  and  fro  in  Ms  hlessed 
might  until  lie  bix>ught  the  great  building  down,  and 
buried  himself  and  ail  around  in  one  crash  of  ruin,  so  the 
bKnd  legislators  of  our  age — blind  to  all  the  best  interests 
and  wants  of  society — have  laid  hold  of  tiiis  great  pillar  that 
sustained  the  whole  edi§ce  of  society  and  liave  shajien  it 
to  its  centre.  Besolating  by  their  impious  legislation  the 
sanctity  and  inviolability  of  marriage  by  their  doctrine  and 
laws  of  divorce,  they  have  dethroned  woman,  and  flung  Jier 
back  to  what  she  was  in  the  pagan  time,  and  delivered  up 
man  to  the  wild  and  unbiidled  indulgences  of  his  own  pas- 
sions, and  -so  destroyed  the  family,  throtigli  the  family 
the  nation,  and  through  the  nation  the  world.  (Applause.) 
How  is  this  to  be  remedied  ?  Ladies,  I  believe  you  are 
nearly  aU,  perhaps  entirely,  CatholiiJS.    There  is  a  great 


282    Thb  Catholic  Church  Aim  the  Age  we  Lite  iir. 

agitation  going  oa  in  feliis  age,  all  about  "vvhat  they  call 
'^'woaiaa'a  riglits.'*  (Laughter.)  They  TJVuaL  to  get  the 
right  of  returning-  members,  to  Pailiaiuent — indeed,  I  be- 
lieve they  wai>t  to  get  the  right  of  beieg  returned  there 
themselves.  (Laughter.)  Li  America  they  have  puslied 
their  rights  very  iar — very  far  indeed — some  of  them  in- 
volving the  right  of  shoo-ting  a  man  witli  impunity. 
(Laughter.)  It  is  a  dangerous  thing,  i  can  tell  you,  to 
pick  a  quarrel  with  one  of  those  ladies,,  to  be  shot  in  a 
railway  carriage  or  a  tram-car,  and  to  hnd  no  jury  in  the 
land  so  devoid  of  gallantry  as  to  convict  a  woman  and 
have  her  hanged — (laughter) — such  a  thing  wo-uld  be  un- 
heard of.  But  while  the  womanhood  outside  the  Catliolic 
Church  are  praticg  about  "woman's  rights,""  they  have 
permitted  their  first,  their  greatest  rig'ht  to  be  taken  out 
of  theu'  hands,  and  it  is  only  within  the  grand  walls  of  the 
holy  Church  of  God  that  woman  still  preserves  the  sanc- 
tity and  dignity  of  her  position  as  a^  wife  and  mother.  (Loud 
cheers.)  I  do  not  mean  to  impugn  the  fidelity  of  husbands 
who  are  not  Catholics  ;  I  do  not  mean  to  lower  th^  dignity 
of  wives  who  are  not  Catholics  ;  but  this  I  must  say  :  that 
it  is  only  in  the  Catholic  Church  thnfc  woman  is  perfectly 
safe  from  the  treachery  of  the  heart  of  her  hiisbaiid,  nnd 
that  man  Is  perfectly  safe  from  his^  own  imbeeHity  and 
from  the  dangerorrs  mfideTity  of  his  own  passions.  (Cheers.) 
T  find  grent  fault  with  the  political  Kfe,  the  h^gislative 
and  political  life,  of  this  nineteenth  century.  What  is  it 
that  constitutes  the  security  of  any  nation  or  of  any  peo- 
ple "i  It  must  be — wherever  society  is  civilized,  wherever 
the  light  of  God  beams— it  must  be  of  necessity  the  justice 
of  tlieir  cause.  If  a  people  have  their  rights  founded  up- 
on justice,  these  rights  are  to  be  respected,  and  the  re^^pect 
the  world  has  for  them — the  respect  that  natrons  in  their 
internatlonnl  relations  have  for  right  and  jiTsticre,  irre- 
8X)ective  alto/^ther  of  power;  the  resT>ect  they  have  for 
treaties,  irrespective  of  their  own  ability  to  break  them — 
constitutes  the  political  and  international  life  of  the  world. 
Take  that  away,  break  those  treaties  with  impuaity,  let 


The  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age  we  Live  in.  283 

them  lose  their  sacredness,  let  truth  and  justice  be  un- 
availing where  the  greater  power  comes  in  to  suppress  the 
weaker,  and  you  reduce  society  to  the  elements  of  chaos 
and  barbarism  out  of  which  Christianity  alone  brought  it 
forth.     (Applause.) 

Now,  I  say  that  in  the  political  life  of  this  nineteenth 
century  I  liave  this  great  fault  to  find :  that  the  spirit  of 
our  age  is  hurrying  us  back  to  the  first  elements  of  bar- 
barism and  of  savage  chaos.  What  is  a  treaty  worth  to- 
day ?  One  nation  makes  a  treaty  with  another.  They 
swear  to  observe  it.  What  is  it  worth  ?  Not  the  paper 
that  it  is  written  upon.  After  the  Crimean  war  we  made 
a  treaty  with  Russia  that  she  was  not  to  send  her  war-shipg 
any  more  into  the  Black  Sea.  She  swore  she  would  ob- 
serve that  condition,  but  she  was  only  watching  the  oppor- 
tunity, and  the  moment  she  saw  the  Prussians  had  con- 
quered the  French  she  broke  that  treaty,  tore  it  into  bits, 
and  ordered  her  war-ships  into  the  Black  Sea.  Did  any- 
body taunt  her  with  her  heartless  faith  ?  Did  anybody 
call  her  a  purjurer  ?  No,  that  is  all  out  of  fashion  nowa- 
days ;  it  is  no  crime  now  for  a  nation  to  break  its  oath  or 
to  violate  its  treaty,  if  it  only  has  the  power  to  snap  its 
fingers  at  those  it  wrongs.  (Applause.)  The  Treaty  of 
Prague,  what  does  it  avail  to  Denmark  to-day  ?  Not  the 
paper  it  is  written  on.  And  why  ?  Because  Germany  has 
the  power  to  break  it,  and  she  has  broken  it.  (Cheers/) 
The  oath  of  Victor  Emmanuel  in  the  Convention  of  Sep- 
tember— he  swore  before  God  and  heaven  that  he  never 
would  invade  Rome  ;  that  he  would  never  allow  a  soldier 
of  his  to  invade  its  walls  ;  that  he  would  leave  the  Pope 
in  possession  of  his  ancient  home  and  city.  But  as  soon 
as  ever  he  dares  he  turns  his  cannon  against  the  v/alls  of 
Rome,  he  bombards  them,  his  soldiery  rush  through  the 
breach,  he  imposes  his  sway  upon  Rome,  and  actually 
gives  thanks  to  God  because  the  Almighty  had  given  him 
the  means  to  break  his  oath.  (Applause.)  This  is  the 
political  teaching  of  the  world.  When  the  war  between 
Germany  and  France  broke  out  you  all  know  there  was  a 


284     The  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age  we  Live  in. 

plot  hatched  between  Napoleon  and  Bismarck  to  seize 
Belgium  and  divide  it  between  them — Belgium,  an  inde- 
pendent kingdom,  its  people  a  free  people,  offending  no- 
body, its  crime  that  it  was  a  rich  prize,  and  that  its  only- 
protection  was  founded  on  right  and  justice.  It  had  the 
misfortune  to  be  small  and  weak.  Bismarck  said  Najx)- 
leon  wanted  it,  and  Napoleon  said  it  was  Bismarck  that 
wanted  it ;  but  between  them  both  it  came  out  that  the 
two  thieves  had  been  putting  their  heads  together  to  rob 
their  neighbors.     (Cheers  and  laughter.) 

I  ask  you,  my  friends,  what  remedy  is  there  to-day  for 
this  political  evil  of  the  age,  which  everybody  acknow- 
ledges \  Every  man — every  right-reasoning  man — acknow- 
ledges that  the  balance  of  power  is  destroyed ;  that  treaties 
have  ceased  to  bind  ;  that  the  only  law  which  is  now  ac- 
knowledged by  the  nations  is  the  law  of  might  against  right. 
La  force  contre  le  droits  has  become  an  axiom  among 
diplomatists.  "Are  you  able  to  rob  your  neighbor?  He 
has  just  gone  down  the  street,  and  has  a  gold  watch  in  his 
pocket.  Are  you  able  to  take  him  by  the  throat '{"  "  Yes, 
I  think  I  am  the  stronger  man  of  the  two."  *'  Then  go 
and  take  the  watch."  (Laughter  and  applause.)  Nay, 
more,  the  nations  are  speaking  of  each  other  as  if  they 
were  a  pack  of  robbers.  Take  the  Times  newspaper  or 
any  other  newspax)er  any  day,  and  you  will  find  them  cry- 
ing out:  "We  must  make  fortifications  here;  we  must 
build  a  camp  here  ;  we  must  march  an  army  there,  because 
we  do  not  know  the  day  when  Bismarck  or  somebody  else 
will  come  and  attack  us." 

Why  should  he  come  %  Because  he  is  a  robber.  Tliere 
is  no  other  conclusion.  (Applause.)  Germany  has  become 
an  armed  camp.  All  Europe  is  oblige^d  to  ai-ra  like  her. 
The  moment  every  young  man  becomes  eighteen  years  old 
he  is  fit  to  be  killed,  and  the  very  first  thing  the  Govern- 
ment does  is  to  make  a  soldier  of  him.  (Cheers  and  Jangli- 
ter.)  But  why  is  this  \  Why  is  France  trying  to  raise  an 
army  of  upwards  of  a  million  ?  Why  has  Germany  more 
than  a  million  armed  men?    Why  .is  Russia  boasting  of 


The  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age  we  Live  in.     285 

her  nearly  two  millions  ?  Why  are  all  nations  armed  to 
the  teeth,  with  their  hands  on  their  swords  and  pistols  ? 
Because  they  acknowledge  they  have  become  a  pack  of 
robbers.  (Applause.)  Now,  my  dear  friends,  it  was  not 
so  in  the  olden  time.  There  was  a  time  when  if  one  nation 
was  going  to  war  with  another  they  would  have  to  explain 
to  the  world  that  the  war  was  a  Just  one — that  they  could 
not  help  it.  For  many  ages  the  pope  was  the  acknowledged 
head  of  Christendom,  and  if  the  king  of  England  was 
going  to  make  war  against  the  king  of  France,  he  would 
go  and  explain  to  the  pope  his  reason ;  and  if  the  pope 
said,  ' '  You  must  not  make  war,"  he  was  obliged  to  submit, 
or  if  he  would  not  the  pope  excommunicated  him,  and 
called  upon  all  the  nations  to  rise  up  against  him  as  a 
malefactor.  (Applause.)  This  was  the  law  of  nations ; 
this  was  the  public  conscience  of  Eurppe  for  many  ages. 
How  are  we  to  save  the  world  to-day  unless  you  get  some- 
body to  keep  the  public  conscience?  "Oh!"  says  Mr. 
Froude,  when  he  was  lecturing  in  America,  "the  pope 
was  at  that  time  the  keeper  of  the  public  conscience,"  and 
it  was  quite  true,  and  I  am  sure  if  it  was  not  true  Mr. 
Froude  would  not  have  stated  it,  especially  with  n^ation 
to  the  pope.  (Laughter.)  Then  I  asked  him  :  "Would  you 
be  kind  enough  to  tell  us  is  there  such  a  thing  as  a  public 
conscience  now,  and  if  there  is,  who  keeps  it?"  (Great 
laughter  and  applause.) 

I  behold  in  the  age  we  live  in  much  to  admire  and  much 
to  deplore.  I  behold  the  Catholic  Church  standing  to-day, 
her  sovereign  head  uncovered  and  dethroned,  practically 
and  really  imprisoned.  Has  she  lost  one  tittle  of  her  nnity  ? 
(Cheers.)  Has  the  Pope  ceased  to  be  her  head,  her  acknow- 
ledged representative  in  the  grand  unity  of  his  jurisdiction, 
representing  in  the  eyes  of  the  Church  the  one  invisible 
Head  who  is  at  the  Father's  right  hand  in  heaven  ?  Not 
one  iota  has  the  Holy  Father  lost  of  the  veneration  and 
love  on  oiir  part,  but  rather  has  he  received  an  increase  of 
it  from  his  temporary  calamities.  (Loud  cheers.)  He, 
the  head,  represents  the  unity  of  the  Church.     There  she 


2S3     The  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age  wf  Live  nr, 

slaiids — one,  undivided,  indivisible — before  this  age  of  ours. 
The  unity  that  was  put  upon  her  in  answer  to  the  piayer 
of  Him  who  said  :  "Lord,  the  Father  in  heaven,  let  them  be 
one,  as  Thou  and  I  are  one,"  is  upon  her  to-day.  She 
stands  in  her  robe  of  sanctity,  protesting  against  tLe  moral 
evii  una  Ugainst  the  political  evil  of  this  nineteenth  cen- 
tury.    (Cheers.) 

Accepting  all  the  results  of  her  scientific  research, 
glorying  in  them,  making  use  of  them  for  her  own  divine 
purposes,  encouraging  every  man  who  thinks  he  can  dis- 
cover some  hidden  mystery  of  nature,  but  in  all  her  sanc- 
tity against  all  the  evil  around  her,  she  stands  before  the 
nineteenth  century  the  only  voice  that  is  able  to  make 
itself  heard  and  respected,  and  the  only  one  that  can  heal 
and  remedy  the  lusts  of  our  age.  (Cheers.)  She  stands 
protesting,  even  though  her  voice  may  have  lost  the  tones 
of  temporal  power  ;  she  protests  against  the  tyranny  that 
would  revolutionize,  the  insurrection,  the  insubordination 
and  disobedience  of  the  peoples  that  would  rise  against  all 
law  and  revolutionize  all  society.  (Loud  cheers.)  Oh  ! 
the  richness  of  her  inheritance.  This  age  denies  her 
powers  to  interfere,  or  dictate,  or  even  to  advise  ;  but  the 
evils  of  the  world  will  never  find  their  remedy  until  this 
world,  and  this  age,  return  a.iiiain  upon  the  old  track  and 
kneel  down  before  the  Church  of  God,  to  receive  at  her 
hand  the  graces  of  intellectual  power  without  intellectual 
immoi-ality,  of  moral  virtue,  and  of  the  sanctification  of  its 
society,  until  the  nations  hear  her  voice  once  more ;  and, 
whether  they  put  the  crown  upon  her  brow  or  not,  they 
will  yet  admit  into  their  councils  and  deliberations  the 
only  voice  that  for  nearly  two  thousand  years  has  re- 
sounded always  on  the  side  of  justice,  mercy,  and  clemency, 
governing  the  rulers  and  saving  the  people  from  the  wild 
ambition  of  kings  and  monarchs.  (Great  cheering.) 
When  that  auspicious  day  shall  come  again  the  world  will 
rejoice.  We  Catholics  know  that  it  is  coming— (cheer-)— 
we  also  believe  that  man  is  getting  more  perfect  as  he  goes 
on,  not  only  in  conquests  of  scientific  research,  but  also  in 


The  Catholic  Church  and  the  Age  v/e  Live  in.     287 

the  liigiier  march  by  which  the  world  is  approachiag  lu^arer 
to  Him  who  id  choosing  and  sanctifying  His  own  elect ;  we 
not  only  believe  this,  but  we  believe  that  it  is  oidy  through 
the  Catholic  Church,  the  spouse  of  God,  tlie  one  lioly,  the 
one  infallible  Church  of  God,  the  one  power  which  alone 
claims  and  represents  and  exercises  the  authority  of  God 
in  this  world  which  He  has  made— that  it  is  througli  that 
Church  alone  our  age  and  every  succeeding  age  can  be 
preserved,  regenerated,  sanctified,  and  truly  ennobled. 
(Cheers.)  Oh  !  may  that  day  come  ;  may  He  who  is  com- 
ing hasten  its  approach  and  the  triumph  of  His  Church, 
when  she  shall  arise  again,  the  glory  of  the  world,  as  she 
was  in  ages  gone  by — a  glory  still  remaining  to  her — that 
it  may  be  acknowledged  by  all  men,  that  the  snving  cross 
may  fling  its  shadow  over  all  the  nations,  and  that  the 
Great  Teacher  may  be  recognized,  with  the  one  teaching 
that  proclaims  the  reign  of  prudence,  justice,  temperance, 
and  fortitude,  which  are  such  noble  virtues  that  no  man 
loveth  anything  more  precious  in  this  world.  (Enthusiastic 
cheering.) 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Science, 


This  lecture  was  delivered  in  Dublia  before  an  immense  audience.  It  is 
one  of  the  most  entertainiag  aud  instructive  of  his  lectures,  and  though 
but  an  abridgment  it  is  well  worthy  of  perusal.  On  coming  forward 
Father  Burke  w.is  greeted  with  a  siorm  of  applause.  When  silence  was 
restored  the  reverend  father  said  : 

T  HAVE  the  honor  to  appear  before  you  this  evening 
■*•  to  discuss  a  most  important  question — namely,  the 
relations  of  the  Catholic  Church  to  science  and  to  scientific 
men.  It  is  a  subject  interesting,  indeed,  to  you  as  Catho- 
lics, although  you  repose  in  the  absolute  certainty  of  your 
principles.  It  is  a  subject  so  interesting  to  some  of  your 
fellow- citizens  that  it  is  driving  half  of  them  mad. 
(Laughter  and  applause.)  Now,  as  the  room  is  warm,  and 
I  do  not  wish  to  detain  you  a  moment  longer  than  is 
necessary,  I  may  as  well  go  into  my  subject  at  once.  You 
all  know  when  the  summer  comes,  and  people  go  to  bathe, 
there  are  two  ways  of  getting  into  the  water.  One  man 
sneaks  in — a  very  ^lncomfortable  way.  Another  man  gets 
on  a  rock  and  takes  a  "header."  (Laughter.)  You  will 
permit  me  to  take  a  "header"  into  the  subject.  (Lausrhter.) 
First  of  all,  I  will  lay  down  this  principle :  that  hunjan 
reason  alone  is  not  sufficient  to  guide  man  to  a  knowledge 
of  revealed  religion.  The  proof  of  tliis — and  the  all-suf- 
ficient proof — lies  in  the  simple  fact  that  God  has  made  a 
revelation,  and  God  never  would  have  made  that  revelation 
if  it  were  not  necessary,  and  if  human  reason  alone  could 
have  guided  man  into  the  knowledge  and  practice  of  re- 
vealed religion.    (Hear,  hear,  and  applause.)    The  student 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Science.  289 

of  nature  and  nature's  laws,  tlie  niore  deeply  he  goes  into 
the  subject  of  his  researches,  the  more  thoroughly  is  he 
convinced  that  in  the  vast  creation  of  God  theie  is  nothing 
umiecessary  or  sui^ertiuous.  Everything  has  its  place; 
everything  has  its  specified  oIiict\  11",  therefore,  the 
hunicui  reason  of  man  were  ail-suflicient  to  guide  him  to 
the  revealed  religion  of  God,  tht-n  Almighty  God  never 
would  have  be.'U  guilty  of  the  suj)eriiuous  act  of  revela- 
tion. 

I  remember  once  preaching  a  sermon  when  a  young 
priest,  and  afti^r  the  sermon  was  over  I  met  a  countryman 
— it  was  doAvn  in  the  West  of  Ireland— and  I  said  to  him  : 
"Frank,  how  did  you  like  tlie  sermon?"  ''It  was  very 
good,  sir,"  said  he — "a  very  good  sermon."  '"Did  it 
throw  any  light  on  your  mind  T'  "  Begorni,  it  did  not ;  I 
knew  it  all  before."  (Laugliter  and  applause.)  If  the 
r.'.ison  of  man  was  sufficient  to  climb  the  height  of  divine 
and  revcah  d  knowledge  unassisted  by  revelation  from  God, 
then  would  man  be  in  a  position  to  tay  to  the  ISon  of  God 
when  lie  came  down  from  heaven  to  teach  :  "You  may  go 
back  Avith  your  message,  we  Ivuew  it  all  before."  l)ur,  in 
truth,  reason  was  not  sufficient  for  this  herculean  task. 
The  miglitiest  intellects  of  antiquity — the  purest,  the  most 
subtle,  tlie  most  gifted  tninds  of  pagan  civilization — direct- 
ed all  their  attention  and  all  their  efforts  to  the  solution 
of  the  simple  question  :  "Who  is  God  and  who  is  uianT" 
and  the  greatest  philosophers  of  antiquity,  unillumined  by 
the  light  of  revelation,  were  obliged  to  bov/  down  and  to 
confess  that  they  were  unable  to  answer  the  question  which 
the  little  Catholic  child  could  do  the  first  day  he  took  his 
Catechism  in  his  hand.     (Loud  applause.) 

It  would,  perhaps,  be  asked  what  place  has  reason, 
what  use  has  iti  The  Almighty  God  has  given  you  two 
great  guides,  each  distinct  in  its  own  sphere  each  distinct 
in  its  own  operaticm  and  in  its  own  sourc  '  of  knowledge. 
He  has  given  you  reason  to  be  your  guide  to  human  know- 
ledge, and  through  the  mazes  of  human  science  to  throw 
its  light  forth  on  the  hidden  places  of  nature,  to  investi- 


230  m\:i:  Catholic  Churcs  axd  Science. 

gate  ill!  tlie  wonderfiil  phenomena  with  which  you  are 
sarrounded,  and  to  diuw  from  that  investigation  those 
liigh.  principles  teackuig  the  laws  which  govern  the  ma- 
terial world  and  the  creation  of  God.  He  has  also  given 
you  in  another  sphere  another  guide.  Man  is  immortaL 
Man  is  imperishable.  He  cannot  die.  The  body  dies,  but 
the  soul  shall  live  ;  and  this  truth,  primary  and  essential, 
even  the  pagan  philosopher  of  old  knew  when  he  said : 
^'' Nonor,inis  moriar'^'' — "I  will  not  altogether  die."  If, 
then,  the  destiny  of  man  is  eternal,  if  the  origin  of  man 
beclouded  in  mystery,  if  the  true  essence  and  existence  of 
man  be  one  of  the  profoundest  mysteries  that  exists,  so 
that  the  Grecian  philosopher  made  it  the  summit  of  the 
philosophy  of  man  simply  to  know  himself — it  follows 
that  the  Almighty  God  must  have  provided  for  us  some 
other  guide  besides  that  of  mere  human  reason — some 
guide  coming  not  from  the  world  but  from  heaven — some 
guide  illuminated  not  by  the  light  of  time  but  by  the  ray3 
of  eternity — some  guide  able  to  take  our  hand  and  lead  us 
through  all  the  mazes  of  time  to  the  very  threshold  of  our 
eternal  being,  and  there  to  show  the  splendid  revelation 
of  all  tlie  hopes  He  has  created  in  our  hearts.  (Loud  ap- 
plause.) That  guide  is  divine — revealed  religion.  Each  of 
these  two  guides  has  its  own  great  and  wonderful  work  in 
its  own  sphere.  You  can  look  at  the  magnificent  triumi)hs 
of  human  reason  in  the  researches  of  modern  science. 
They  are  children  of  this  ninett^enth  century — this  nine- 
teenth century  so  full  of  pride,  so  full  of  injustice,  so  full 
of  resolution  from  above  and  revolution  from  below,  so 
full  of  contempt  for  all  the  sacred  and  time-honored  prin- 
ciples of  right,  of  justice,  and  of  law,  yet  still  a  century 
with  so  much  to  admire,  to  love,  and  to  revere  in  its  mag- 
nificent scientific  progress.  (Applause.)  I  am  a  son  of 
that  age,  bom  in  its  bosom,  scarcely  expecting  to  see  the 
dawn  of  the  coming  century.  Childhood,  manhood,  and 
prospectivt?  age,  all  are  the  property  of  this  nineteenth 
century  ;  and  althouorh  T  wear  a  liabit  seven  Ininrlr  'd  years 
old,  and  linked  altogether  with  the  traditions  of  bygone 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Science.  391 

times,  yet  I  am  free  to  say  tliafc  us  a  man,  as  a  priest,  as  a 
Doniinicau  friar,  I  am  proud  of  the  age  in  wiiicii  I  was  ^ 

born,     ((iieat  applause.) 

It  is  an  age  tliat  has  effected  great  wonders.  It  has  im- 
prisoned within  the  valves  of  the  steam-engine  a  power 
able  to  anniiiilate  space  and  to  span  the  world,  it  has 
caught  the  very  lightning  of  heaven — those  destructive 
elements  in  which  your  forefathers  saw  only  the  tiireat  in 
the  hands  of  an  angry  God  of  desolation  and  dealh.  Ifc 
has  caught  the  fleeting  lightning  that  '^appeareth  in  the 
east  and  shineth  even  unto  the  west."  It  has  bound  it 
down  to  a  wire,  and  made  it  a  messenger  of  thought  from 
man  to  man  instantaneously,  throughout  the  whole  face  of 
the  world,  and  even  under  the  soa.  (Applause.)  This  age 
of  ours  has  caught  the  air,  invisible  to  the  eye,  impalpable 
to  the  touch — the  sensible,  grosser  touch.  It  has  caught 
that  air,  compressed  it,  expanded  it,  made  it  a  sein^ant, 
v/eighod  and  measured  it,  and  placed  it  under  rules  of 
sciontiiic  discovery  and  management  in  a  most  wonderful 
lYii^hion.  This  age  of  ours  has  so  enlarged  the  orb  of  hu- 
man vision  that  the  eye  of  man,  which  naked  and  natural 
can  scarcely  cover  the  extent  of  the  horizon,  and  is  only 
able  to  take  in  a  few  objects  surrounding  him — that  eye, 
under  the  guide  of  the  scientific  genius  of  the  age,  is  able 
to  pierce  the  vault  of  heaven,  to  call  from  the  far-off  re- 
cesses of  millions  of  miles  planets  and  stars  unseen  by  their 
ancestors,  and  to  place  the  wonders  of  the  ethereal  firma- 
ment under  almost  tlie  very  hand  and  touch  of  the  scien- 
tific man.  (Applause.)  In  this,  and  in  the  ten  thousand 
improvements  tending  to  the  comfort  and  solace  of  human 
life,  you  see  a  grand  work.  The  art  of  medicine  has  pro- 
gressed so  as  to  lead  to  the  mitigation,  in  some  cases  to  the 
annihilation,  of  fearful  diseases  that  you  were  accustomed 
to.  The  art  of  chemistry  is  about  to  follow,  almost  like 
the  Almighty  Eye  itself,  the  crafty  devices  of  the  mur- 
derer, to  track  the  secrets  of  his  misde(^d'S  to  take  from  the 
decomposed  body  the  evide^ico  of  the  life  and  of  the  death 
of  him  who  moved  in  the  flesh. 


2D2  TiJE  Catholic  Ciiurch  a^'d  Science. 

It  would  require  a  tongue  far  more  eloquent  than  that 
of  llio  liljliest  ccijutilic  ^jniim  o'  tlio  age  to  dolliie,  or  even 
to  give  ".a  outline,  of  the  triumphs  of  this  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. Di:t  shoull  you  den;-  to  the  Church  her  triumphs? 
Lcholi  llie  naticLL3  o2  to-day  basking  in  the  light  of  civi- 
lization I  Beliold  the  nationc  or  to-day  advancing  mth  rapid 
strides  in  every  art  and  science,  and  then  ask  yourselves  the 
simple  question,  ^yllo  brought  out  of  the  darkness — out  of  ' 
chaos,  out  of  utter  disruption — who  drew  forth  from  the 
awful  ruins  of  the  crushed  and  broken-up  world  of  the  lif th 
century,  tlio  gioric^s  of  the  nineteenth  century  ?  The  angels 
of  the  world's  history  would  point  to  the  magnificent  lig- 
nre  of  the  Catholic  Church  of  Jesus  Christ.  (Yeliemeiit 
applause.)  She  tdone  did  it,  who  alone  was  able  (o  do  it. 
S!i3  to  >k  tlie  rude  savage  son  of  the  northern  forests — ijhe 
took  the  child  of  barbaiism,  inilated  with  the  trium})li  and 
victory  in  which  h.^  tiampled  upon  imperial  Rome,  mak- 
ing his  blood-stained  offerings  to  his  northern  pagan  gods, 
Tiiiconscious  of  mercy,  unconscious  of  clemency,  uncon- 
scious of  purity  or  self-restraint,  wild  barbarian,  all  the 
more  torrible  becau-e  witli  his  barbaric  hand  he  had  shat- 
tered the  great  civilization  of  paganism — and  out  of  such 
Tinpromising  elements  the  Church  elaborated  during  many 
weary  ages  the  civilization  which  is  our  piide  and  glory  to- 
day. (Cheers.)  She  turned  barbaric  pride  into  meekness  ; 
Bhe  drew  from  out  of  a  people  detestable  in  rheir  impurity 
an  immaculate  priesthood  and  a  very  self- restraining  Ciiris- 
tian  manhood.  She  gathered  together  aU  that  remained 
of  the  universal  wreck  and  ruin  of  ancient  art  and  science 
and  civilization,  and  she  tr".isui-ed  them  in  her  cloisters  ; 
she  watched  them  v,qth^  zealous  care  ;  she  brought  them 
forth  from  day  to  day  in  In^r  great  universities  ;  she  j)re- 
parod  the  nations  to  receive  them  :  slie  is  the  motiier  of 
fhnt  Christendom  or  Christianity  which  made  tlie  world  a 
civilized  and  an  organized  power  when  it  seemed  as  if 
nothing  short  of  tiie  creative  woid  of  God  could  have 
drawn  liirht  from  so  much  darkness  or  order  from  so  much 
ruin.     (Cheers.)     Behold  her  maityrs  for  three  hundred 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Science.  293 

years  deluging  every  province  and  city  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire with  Christian  blood  !  Behold  her  virgins  lighting  up 
the  lamp,  vk^ell  trimmed  and  filled  with  the  oil  of  divine 
love,  and  tiiereby  illuminating  the  darkness  of  the  na- 
tions !  Behold  her  missionaries  spread  into  every  land,  so 
that  their  voices  were  heard  on  every  soil  on  which  the 
sun  of  heaven  shineth  !  Behold  her  penitents,  their  pride 
broken,  their  sin  humbled  to  its  own  destruction,  and  the 
greatest  of  her  saints  made  lights  of  the  world  from  being 
the  greatest  of  sinners — the  heresy  of  an  Augustine  changed 
to  the  light  of  God's  Church,  and  the  great  sinner  become 
the  Bishop  of  Hippo  ! 

Of  such  and  such,  multiplied  indefinitely,  were  the  tri- 
umphs of  the  Church  of  God,  as  great  and  greater  in  her 
sphere  of  that  which  was  divinely  revealed,  purer  in  faith, 
holier  in  morals,  than  are  the  collateral  triumphs  of  the 
science  of  an  age  of  which  you  are  proud.  And  God  in- 
tended that  these  two  great  guides  should  move  harmoni- 
ously together  over  all  the  universal  creation  of  God,  the 
infinite  harmony  of  whose  divine  being  shines  out  in  the 
admirable  order  that  prevails  throughout.  No  one  force  of 
nature  animates  another.  Light  lends  to  light,  knowledge 
helps  knowledge.  The  abyss  of  one  form  of  knowledge 
only  calls  to  another  abyss,  cognate  and  collateral  to  itself. 
Behold  the  heavens  of  God,  how  harmoniously  they  move 
in  their  infinite  movements  and  variety !  Behold  the  di- 
vine law  shining  forth,  so  that  harmony  is  found  through- 
out the  whole  creation  of  God  !  It  was  the  intention  of 
God  that  the  two  great  guides — reason  and  revelation — 
should  work  harmoniously  together  to  bring  man  to  the 
full  perfection  of  his  being,  beginning  on  earth  and  end- 
ing on  a  high  throne  in  heaven  with  God. 

Wliile  the  Church  to-day  says,  as  she  has  always  said, 
that  she  is  no  enemy  to  science,  that  science  is  no  enemy 
to  revelation,  that  she  is  not  afraid  of  it,  that  she  loves 
it,  the  children  of  the  world,  on  the  other  hand,  scientific 
men,  the  men  who  spend  their  days  in  study  of  nature's 
laws,  are  loud  in  proclaiming  that  religion  is  an  enemy  of 


294  The  Catholic  Church  axd  Science. 

science.  Generally  speaking,  in  this  world  there  is  some 
great  delusion  or  some  great  deception  always  held  up 
before  the  world.  One  time  it  is  a  scientific  delusion,  an- 
other time  a  false  system  of  philosophy,  another  time,  and 
indeed  at  all  times,  some  form  of  religious  error,  the  most 
numerous  of  all  the  delusions  of  the  deviL  (Laughter.) 
Now,  one  of  the  great  delusions  of  our  day  is  this :  men 
imagine,  and  speak,  and  write,  and  seem  to  believe  that  the 
Catholic  Church  is  engaged  in  a  tremendous  and  constant 
onslaught  upon  science  and  scientific  men.  That  is  the 
great  parable  of  the  day.  That  is  the  text  on  which  all 
the  anti-Catholic  newspapers  are  uniting.  "Oh  !  who  will 
save  us  from  that  terrible  Pope  1 ' '  exclaimed  big,  blustering 
Bismarck.  (Great  laughter  and  cheers.)  "  He'll  crush  us. 
I  have  only  two  millions  of  trained  soldiers,  the  grandest 
army  in  the  world,  at  my  back,  and  he  has  not  a  single 
man."  (Continued  laughter  and  cheers.)  And  then  out 
came  the  Times  newspaper  of  London  on  the  edifying 
spectacle  of  Bismarck  and  Germany  trying  to  save  them- 
selves from  the  terrible  attacks  of  Pius  IX.  and  the  Ultra- 
montanes.  (Cheers,  laughter,  and  some  hisses.)  "Oh!  who 
will  save  us?"  exclaims  Gladstone.  (Laughter,  cheers,  and 
hisses.)  "Who  will  save  us  from  the  terrible  Vatican 
Decrees  ?  They  loosened  all  the  bonds  of  loyalty  and  alle- 
giance. We  cannot  trust  a  Catholic  any  more,  no  matter 
who  he  is ;  I  do  not  care  whether  he  be  a  lord  chancellor 
or  a  postmaster-general  or  a  private  soldier.  (Loud 
laughter  and  cheers.)  They  are  all  gone,  no  more  alle- 
giance or  loyalty  ;  if  the  man  sent  word  to-morrow,  they 
would  be  up  with  a  knife  at  our  throats,  and  who  knows 
but  it  is  Cardinal  Cullen  that  would  be  minister?"  (Roars 
of  laughter  and  vehement  cheering.)  "Ah  !  who  will  save 
us,"  exclaims  Professor  Tyndall— (continued  laughter  and 
cheers)— "who  will  save  us  from  that  terrible  Catholic 
Church,  these  terrible  Ultramontanes  ?  They  want,  if  you 
please,  to  make  religion  a  kind  of  knowledge,  and  not  to 
leave  it  in  the  region  of  emotions  with  Messrs.  Moody  and 
Sankey.     (Renewed  laughter  and  hearty  cheers.)     They 


Tme  Gatholiv  Church  and  Science.  295 

will  teach,  young  men  the  necessity  of  going  to  confession 
instead  of  leaning  on  their  emotions.  (Cheers  and  laughter.) 
They  will  teach  their  people,  if  they  have  stolen  anything, 
that  they  must  give  it  back.  Oh  I  who  will  save  us  from 
them  and  leave  us  to  our  emotions  ?  Have  we  not  har- 
moniums? (Loud  laughter.)  Have  we  not  beautiful  hymns ? 
(Laughter.)  Have  we  not  grand  sermons  all  about  leaning 
on  the  Lord  and  nothing  more  ?  (Renewed  laughter.) 
Have  we  not  heaven  made  easy  ?  (Laughter  and  cheers.) 
Oh !  who  will  save  us  from  Catholics  saying  their  prayers 
and  abstaining  on  Fridays — (laughter) — examining  their 
consciences,  keeping  themselves  pure,  restoring  if  they 
had  the  misfortune  to  take  a  farthing  or  a  farthing' s  worth  ? ' ' 
It  is  all  very  fine.  Lean  upon  the  Lord  and  trust  to  your- 
selves.    (Continued  laughter  and  applause.) 

Meanwhile  the  great  Catholic  Church  stands  there, 
robbed  and  plundered  in  Italy,  imprisoned  in  Germany, 
fettered  and  hampered,  crossed  and  contradicted  in  France, 
in  Spain,  in  Brazil,  held  up  to  scorn  and  ridicule.  The  blind 
fools'  cry  all  the  time  is:  "Save  us  from  her— (loud 
cheers) — make  way  until  I  throw  a  stone  right  in  her  face." 
(Cheers.)  Send  a  few  bish.ops  to  prison  ;  send  a  few  priests 
to  prison  ;  take  whatever  tiifle  of  money  they  have ;  take 
all  their  churches,  sell  everything,  and  then  cry  out: 
*' What  a  wonderful  fellow  I  am  to  be  able  to  defend  my- 
self from  the  people!"  (Laughter.)  Then,  on  the  other 
hand,  they  are  told  day  after  day:  "Ah  !  what  would  not 
the  Church  do  to  those  people  if  she  could  lay  her  hands 
upon  them  ?"  Professor  Tyndall  is  a  great  man  in  his  own 
sphere,  a  child  of  genius,  a  glory  to  the  land  that  bore 
him  ;  he  is  tho  scientific  apostle  of  light.  According  to 
those  truth-telling  writers,  if  the  Pope  only  could  get  hold 
of  him  he  would  improve  his  speculations  on  light  by  put- 
ting it  out.  (Laughter  and  cheers.)  Professor  Darwin  is 
a  man  of  extraordinary  talent  and  research  ;  no  one  can 
deny  it.  His  forte  is  what  they  call  comparative  anatomy — 
comparing  different  orders  and  species  of  animals,  and 
trying  to  prove  the  similarity  and  the  analogy  between 


296  The  Catholic  Chuuch  and  Science.  \ 

I 

them — ^and  he  began  very  lowly  indeed  :  he  took  the  sea- 
spittle,  a  thing  that  had  scarcely  any  life  at  all,  and  ou 
that  very  soft  foundation  he  went  on  building  and  build- 
ing until  lie  came  to  man.  As  a  science  it  is  admirable. 
Now,  according  to  the  cry  of  the  day,  if  the  Catholic  devils 
could  get  hold  of  him  they  would  make  Mm  a  specimen  of 
comparative  anatomy  by  dissecting  him.  (Laughter  and 
cheers.)  Now,  this  is  a  popular  delusion,  and  in  this  what 
are  the  men  of  science  doing  ?  They  are  doing  what  a  cele- 
brated Catholic  called  Don  Quixote  once  did  when  he 
attacked  a  windmill.  (Continued  laughter.)  The  mill  was 
quietly  grinding  com  and  flour  to  make  bread  for  the 
laborers  about,  but  the  Don,  in  his  imagination,  thought 
it  was  a  grand  castle,  inhabited  by  ghosts  and  goblins, 
who  held  knights  and  fair  ladies  in  durance  vile,  and,  set- 
ting his  lance  in  rest,  charged  it,  and  broke  his  head 
against  the  walls  of  the  windmill.  (Laughter  and  pro- 
longed cheering.)  Here  is  the  Catholic  Church  quietly 
doing  to-day  what  she  has  done  for  eighteen  hundred  and 
jseventy  years,  grinding,  as  it  were,  the  corn  of  the  Word  of 
God,  to  make  out  of  it  the  bread  of  life  for  men's  souls. 
(Cheers.)  And  around  her  is  not  one  scientific  but  an  en- 
tire army  of  poor,  crazy  Don  Quixotes.  Coming  on  with 
their  lances  in  rest,  one  says  :  "I  will  prove  she  told  a  lie 
in  such  a  year."  (Laughter.)  Another  says :  "  I  will  prove 
that  she  cannot  coexist  with  the  rights  of  civil  allegiance." 
All  poise  their  lances  and  rush  on  madly  to  the  attack, 
until,  passively  resisted  by  the  Rock  of  Ages,  they  fall 
easy  victims  to  their  romantic  folly.     (Loud  cheers.) 

In  the  face  of  all  here  I  assert  a  very  simple  proposi- 
tion, and  it  is  this  :  The  Catholic  Church  is  not  the  enemy 
but  it  is  the  friend  and  patron  and  encourager  of  all  true 
fecience  and  of  all  true  scientific  men.  (Cheers.)  It  is  all 
nonsense  to  assert  the  contrary,  and  I  will  show  it  to  you 
by  bringing  the  search  to  the  plain,  ordinary  test  of  com- 
mon sense.  Let  us  suppose  for  an  instant  that  the  Catho- 
lic Church  is  what  those  men  declare  her  to  be,  afraid  of 
her  life  of  science,  afmid  of  scientilic  men ;  declai-ing  that 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Science,  29'5f 

she  could  not  bear  them ;  telling  them  to  stand  off,  that  if 
she  caught  them  she  would  fix  them.  (Laughter.)  Let  us 
suppose  that  she  considers  deep  scientific  research  to  be 
inconsistent  with  the  profession  of  her  faith  and  the  prac- 
tice of  her  morality,  and  what  would  follow  ?  Let  us  test 
it  by  common  sense.  You  have  all,  like  myself,  been  pre- 
paring for  confession  since  you  were  seven  years  of  age. 
And  did  you  ever  say  when,  examining  your  consciences, 
you  opened  your  prayer-books  and  went  over  the  table  of 
sins :  "  Did  I  press  my  studies  too  far,  or  was  I  too  scienti- 
fic ? "  (Cheers  and  laughter.)  Was  any  Catholic  boy  ever 
expected  to  say  this  at  confession  :  *' Father,  I  am  a  medi- 
cal student,  and  all  the  other  students  are  tremendous 
fellows  for  science,  and,  father,  I  accuse  myself  that  I  was 
inclined  to  study — that  I  was  inclined  and  endeavored  to 
keep  up  with  them  in  their  researches ;  0  father ! 
forgive  me"?  (Laughter  and  applause.)  I  wonder 
if  Sir  Dominic  Corrigan  ever  accused  himself  of  being 
too  studious  or  too  deep  in  his  application  when  studying 
those  subjects  so  great,  and  so  dangerous,  if  you  will,  ia 
which  he  has  achieved  so  grand  a  triumph-  I  wonder  did 
any  confessor  ever  say  to  him  (Sir  Dominic) :  "0  boy ! 
that  will  not  do.  I  hear  you  got  the  first  medal  the  other 
day  at  the  College  of  Surgeons."  (Laughter.)  Every  boy 
at  Stonyhurst,  at  Oscott,  Exshaw,  and  other  great  Catho- 
lic schools  in  England,  and  in  Clongowes  Wood,  and,  in- 
deed, our  own  Catholic  University,  would  do  so  yet.  They 
boasted  how  their  own  pupils  succeeded  in  examinations 
for  cadetship,  for  the  civil  service,  for  engineers,  and  the 
rest,  and  how  Catholic  boys  succeeded  in  this  and  in  that 
science.    (Applause.) 

Now  I  will  put  before  you  two  reasons  which  I  would 
urge  as  practically  and  clearly  as  possible  to  show  that, 
despite  all  that  has  been  said,  the  Catholic  Church  cannot 
be  the  enemy  of  science.  (Applause.)  The  first  is  the 
simple  yet  high  and  grand  reason  that  all  truth,  wherever 
it  exists  in  the  order  of  nature,  or  in  the  supernatural 
order  of  revelation — that  all  truth  comes  from  God.   There 


298  Tee  Catholic  Chjjrch  and  Sciencs, 

is  nothing  true  of  the  things  you  see  in  this  world,  there 
is  nothing  true  of  the  things  that  you  look  forward  to  and 
hope  for  in  the  next,  except  in  so  far  as  it  coincides  with 
the  eternal  truth  which  is  in  God.  (Applause.)  To  say 
that  one  order  of  truth  is  hostile  to  another,  that  it  is  de- 
structive of  another,  is  just  the  same  as  to  say  that  God 
contradicts  Himself.  It  should  be  remembered  that  every- 
thing which  the  Church  of  God  is  accused  of  to-day  she 
herself  has  condemned  over  and  over  again  as  a  damnable 
heresy — ^namely,  that  any  discovery  of  truth  in  nature 
could  be  opposed  to  the  truth  of  revelation.  In.  other 
words,  we  declare  it  a  heresy  to  say  that  God  could  con- 
tradict Himself.  They  say  there  are  two  gods — the  god 
of  nature  and  this  material  world,  and  a  god  of  the  imma- 
terial and  spiritual  and  purely  intellectual  world ;  and 
then,  in  order  to  find  employment  for  these  two,  the  Mani- 
chean  heretics  set  them  fighting — the  most  natural  thing 
in  the  world  if  they  had  nothing  else  to  do.  The  god  of 
matter,  the  god  of  the  lower  creation,  has  his  own  laws, 
his  own  truth,  but  they  are  all  so  arranged  as  to  be  in  op- 
position to  the  superior  god,  and,  therefore,  whenever  one 
of  those  heretics  committed  a  sin — ^whenever  he  robbed 
his  neighbor  or  committed  any  detestable  act  of  private 
Bin — he  at  once  excused  himself  and  said  :  "  Oh  !  I  am  the 
subject  of  the  god  of  nature."  The  Catholic  Church  laid 
her  anathema  upon  this  detestable  heresy,  and  yet,  strange 
to  say,  she  is  to-day  accused  of  being  frightened  at  the 
truths  of  nature,  as  if  they  did  not  proceed  from  the  same 
God  who  gave  her  the  truths  of  revelation.  Tlie  great  truths 
of  science  wherever  they  are  found,  no  matter  how  wonder- 
ful the  results  of  that  science,  if  they  are  only  true,  cannot 
touch  one  iota,  affect  one  scintilla,  of  the  revealed  truths 
of  God  in  the  way  of  injury.  There  is  no  room  even  for 
such  possible  antagonism  as  this.  The  great  sciences — 
astronomy,  chemistry,  natural  philosophy,  and  the  like — 
move  in  one  groove,  and  religion  in  another  ;  and,  just  as 
two  railway  trains  on  parallel  tracks  can  never  collide,  so 
these  can  never  clash.    (Applause.) 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Science.  299 

"^  I  would  invite  your  attention  to  the  words  of  one  of 
'  the  greatest  men  of  the  day.  Dr.  Nevv^nxan  (applause) 
says:  "The  physicist  will  never  ask  himself  by  what 
influence  external  to  the  universe  the  universe  is  sustained, 
simply  because  he  is  a  physicist.  His  basis  of  observation, 
'what  he  starts  from,  what  he  falls  back  upon,  is  the  phe- 
nomena which  meet  the  senses.  If,  indeed,  he  be  a  religi- 
ous man"  (continued Dr. Newman)  "he  will,  of  course,  have 
a  definite  view  of  the  subject.  But  that  view  of  his  is  pri- 
vate— not  the  professional  view  of  a  physicist,  but  of  a 
religious  man  ;  and  this  not  because  physical  science  is 
anything  different,  but  simply  because  it  says  nothing  at 
all  on  the  subject,  nor  can  it  do  so  by  the  very  undertaking 
with  which  it  set  out."  The  Catholic  Church,  therefore, 
is  not  afraid  of  science,  nor  of  the  scientific  man,  as  long 
as  he  sticks  to  his  own  science  and  his  own  subject.  Nay, 
more,  she  encourages  him,  she  protects  him,  for  she  knows 
that  every  addition  to  scientific  truth,  every  great  dis- 
covery in  nature,  every  real  and  substantial  addition  to 
man's  knowledge,  is  a  new  manifestation  of  the  beauty  and 
wisdom  of  God,  and  in  itself  serves  to  prepare  men's  minds 
more  and  more  to  receive  the  divine  message.  (Applause.) 
When  in  her  history  did  the  Church  ever  persecute 
the  scientific  man  as  such  as  long  as  he  stuck  to  his 
own  particular  science  ?  When  did  she  ever  impede  him, 
or  injure  or  imprison  him,  in  the  days  of  her  power  ?  When 
did  she  ever  set  her  censure  on  him  as  purely  and  entirely 
a  scientific  man  ?  Never.  When  did  she  leave  him  un- 
protected and  alone  ?  Never.  (Applause.)  Her  history 
tells  you,  and,  in  truth,  you  owe  the  greatest  results  of  sci- 
entific research  to  the  protection  and  to  the  fostering  and 
kindly  care  of  the  Catholic  Church,  as  I  will  endeavor  to 
let  you  see.  Was  it  not  quite  natural  that  the  Catholic 
Church  should  foster  the  man  of  science,  while  she  knew 
that  every  addition  to  real  truth,  even  of  the  natural  order, 
every  addition  to  the  mighty  store  of  man's  real  knowledge, 
was  but  a  new  revelation  of  the  depth  of  the  riches,  the 
wisdom,  the  power,  and  the  beauty  of  her  God  ?    (Applause.) 


300  The  Catholic  Church  and  Science,  i 

What  better  preparation  could  a  man's  mind  have  to  re- 
ceive her  divine  message  than  the  preparation  of  science  \ 
The  more  a  man  entered  into  the  great  mystery  of  na- 
ture the  more  did  he  behold  in  the  admirable  order  and 
arrangement  of  those  truths  which  he  discovered,  by  habi- 
tual and  deep  study  of  the  awful  hidden  power,  the  admir- 
able hand  of  nature's  God.  (Applause.)  You  are  told 
that  sailors  as  a  rule  are  the  most  reverent  and  religious 
minded  of  men,  because,  it  is  said,  of  their  constant  inter- 
course with  the  vast  ocean.  Now  they  beheld  it  slumber- 
ing in  its  vastness — it  was  like  a  giant  asleep ;  now  they 
saw  it  in  the  gloom  of  night,  hurrying  and  rising  in  its 
wrath,  and  amid  the  thunder  of  the  elements  the  terrible 
force  of  nature  was  at  work  around  them,  and  it  revealed 
to  them,  in  a  great  measure,  the  power  of  God  and  the  ter- 
rors of  His  wrath.  And  I  will  ask,  Would  not  the  same  in- 
fluence naturally  be  at  work  in  the  mind  of  the  astronomer, 
of  the  student  of  the  stars,  as  he  sat  night  after  night  silently 
contemplating  the  mighty  "  orbs  of  heaven  around  him"? 
It  was  a  clear  night,  there  was  silence  around  him  in  his 
watch  tower  ;  with  his  powerful  telescope  he  called  to  him 
the  planets  revolving  millions  of  miles  around  ;  he  saw  in 
space  their  vastness  and  their  number,  scattered  like  snow- 
flakes,  and  yet  he  knew  that  the  least  of  these  was  perhaps 
greater  than  the  world  in  which  he  dwelt.  Wliat  was  more 
calculated  to  bring  home  to  his  mind  the  full  power  and 
wisdom  of  the  guiding  hand  of  God  ?  What  more  calcu- 
lated to  fit  his  mind  for  higher  truths  of  revelation,  and  to 
receive  them  reverently — to  bow  down  and  accept  them 
gratefully — than  the  profound  and  supreme  study  in  which 
science  has  prepared  him  for  a  higher  and  better  light  ? 
(Applause.)  "The  heavens  proclaim  the  glory  of  God, 
and  the  firmament  tells  the  work  of  His  hand."  Therefore, 
as  long  as  the  scientific  man  adheres  to  the  true  principles 
of  his  study  and  does  not  travel  outside  them,  he  will  find 
in  the  Catholic  Church  a  friend  and  an  encourager.  I  will 
give  a  proof  or  two  of  this.  One  of  the  great  questions  of 
the  present  day  is  the  opposition  which  the  Catholic  Church 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Science.  301 

appears  to  have  shown  to  the  new  and  modern,  and,  I  would 
add,  the  true  system  of  astronomy.  For  many  hundreds 
of  years  the  scientific  men  of  tlie  schools  of  this  world,  not 
having  the  powers  of  the  telescope  or  the  aids  of  modem 
science,  held  that  this  world  was  the  centre  of  the  whole 
creation  of  God — that  this  world  or  orb  of  ours  was  fixed 
and  stationary,  and  that  the  sun,  moon,  stars,  and  planets 
of  the  heavens  moved  round  it  as  their  centre. 

Now,  this  is  a  mistake — a  scientific  mistake.  It  was 
held  for  hundreds  of  years ;  the  holy  fathers  and  doctors 
of  the  Church  held  it.  They  interpreted  the  words  of 
Scripture  in  its  literal  sense  to  confirm  it.  The  Scripture 
told  them  that  the  Lord  had  established  the  world  upon 
its  own  basis,  and  would  not  be  moved  for  ever  and  ever. 
Elsewhere  it  was  written:  "He  hath  established  the 
world,  which  shall  not  be  moved"  ;  and  unaided  by  science 
and  on  a  question  which  had  no  direct  or  immediate  bear- 
ing either  on  faith  or  morals,  the  vast  majority,  if  not  the 
whole  of  them,  interpreted  those  words  of  Scripture  in 
their  literal  sense  to  mean  that  this  earth  was  one  vast 
plain — not  a  globe,  but  a  plain  fixed  in  its  place,  and  that 
aU  the  orbs  of  heaven  revolved  around  it.  Well,  by  de- 
grees men  began  to  observe  the  motions  of  the  stars,  to 
observe  the  aberrations  of  certain  planets,  to  observe  certain 
familiar  phenomena  in  the  earth  itself,  as,  for  instance, 
that  a  heavy  weight  thrown  from  a  very  hi^h  place  would 
not  descend  to  earth  in  a  straight  line  as  it  would  if  it  fell 
on  a  plain,  but  would  fall  slightly  towards  the  west,  be- 
.cause  the  earth  was  moving  meanwhile  eastward;  when 
men  discerned  these  things  the  theory  was  started  that  the 
earth  was  not  immovable,  but  moved,  while  the  sun  was 
immovable  and  fixed  in  its  place.  This  was  a  great  novelty 
— perhaps  the  greatest  scientific  discovery  of  any  age. 
And  this  was  brought  forward  as  a  proof  by  these  scien- 
tific men  that  the  Catholic  Church  had  no  welcome  for 
them,  that  she  hates  them,  and  is  an  enemy  to  the  pro, 
gress  of  science  ;  and  why  ?  Because  she  opposed  that 
theory. 


303  The  Catholic  Church  and  SciEycE. 

Now,  the  first  man  who  opposed  this  theory  was  a 
young  German,  born  at  Coblentz  in  1401,  who  had  turned 
his  attention  to  astronomy.  His  name  was  iN'icolos  of 
Pusa,  and  he  published  a  book  in  which  he  laid  down  the 
principle  that  the  earth  was  round ;  and,  according  to  the 
doctrine  of  the  day,  he  ought  to  have  been  throttled. 
(Laughter.)  But  he  propounded  this  theory  simply  as  a 
theory,  for  every  philosophical  truth  must,  at  its  inception, 
be  propounded  as  a  theory.  It  would  be  contrary  to  every 
principle  of  science  and  philosophy  to  take  it  as  an  absolute 
certainty  until  its  truth  was  proved.  K  he,  with  his 
theory,  had  gone  into  Rome  by  the  northern  road  and 
entered  by  tlie  Flaminian  Gate,  he  might  have  been  asked : 
"  Where  are  you  going?  You  are  going,  my  friend,  where 
there  are  inquisitors  who  will  pull  the  windpipe  out  of 
you."  (A  laugh.)  However,  not  having  met  a  kind  angel 
guardian,  I  might  ask  what  became  of  this  young  man. 
They  brought  him  to  the  pope — Nicholas  Y.,  one  of  the 
most  eminent  of  our  pontiffs — ^who  heard  him  prove  his 
theory  in  the  garden  of  the  Vatican,  and,  would  you  believe 
it  %  he  was  immediately  made  a  cardinal,  with  liberty  to 
pursue  his  scientific  studies.  (Applause.)  lie  was  suc- 
ceeded in  his  scientific  investigation  by  a  man  to  whom 
the  world  is  indebted  for  his  system  of  astronomy — Nicho- 
las Copernicus — ^who,  having  been  born  at  Grauenberg, 
became  one  of  the  greatest  astronomers  of  his  day.  There 
was  at  that  time  a  celebrated  Italian  astronomer  named 
Cileo  Caliagnini.  He  was  a  friend  of  Copernicus  and  a 
student,  and  when  Copernicus  died  he  came  to  Rome 
and  there  developed  his  system  under  the  very  eye  of  the 
pope. 

About  the  same  period  there  was  a  celebrated  German 
Oriental  scholar,  Widmanstead.  He,  too,  came  to  Rome, 
with  his  head  full  of  the  new  system  of  astronomy. 
What  happened  to  him  ?  He  was  called  into  the  Vatican 
palace,  and  there  in  the  presence  of  Clement  III.  and  of  the 
cardinals,  and  surrounded  by  all  the  learned  ecclesiastics 
of  Rome,  he  explained  the  system  of  Copernicus,  and  sub- 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Science,  303 

sequently  bore  away  with  him  from  Rome  magnificent  pre- 
sents given  to  him  by  the  pope  for  his  learning.  WJiile  all 
this  was  going  on  at  liome  there  was  another  scientific  man 
who  entered  on  the  scene,  a  man  as  great  as  Copernicus,  as 
great  as  Galileo,  the  famous  Christopher  Columbus — (ap- 
plause)— the  man  who  opened  a  new  world  to  Europe,  who 
first  set  his  eyes  upon  the  grand  shores  of  the  vast  conti- 
nent of  the  West ;  the  man  who,  in  the  providence  of  God, 
was  the  angel  sent  forth,  amongst  other  purposes,  to  pre- 
pare a  home,  a  glorious  and  a  generous  home,  for  the  de- 
scendants of  the  old  race  of  the  island  in  which  we  live. 
(Enthusiastic  applause.)  The  noble  citizens  of  his  native 
republic  of  Genoa  laughed  at  his  projected  enterprise. 
He  came  to  Spain.  He  applied  to  Ferdinand  and  Isabella, 
the  Catholic  sovereigns  of  Leon  and  Castile  ;  but  they 
were  too  much  engaged  with  other  affairs  to  attend  to  him, 
though  he  put  before  them,  with  the  simple  eloquence  of 
genius,  the  great  things  he  would  do  if  they  only  gave  him 
money  and  two  or  three  ships.  A  deaf  ear  was  turned  to 
all  that,  and  it  was  a  memorable  historical  fact  that  when 
no  man  would  listen  to  Columbus  a  Dominican  friar, 
Egeboso,  took  him  in  hand  ;  genius  spoke  to  genius,  the 
friar  said  to  the  mariner:  "IS'o  man  seems  to  understand 
you,  but  I  do";  and  shortly  afterwards,  when  he  was 
made  Archbishop  of  Seville,  the  richest  and  highest  dig- 
nity in  Spain,  he  placed  his  purse  at  the  service  of  Colum- 
bus ;  and,  humanly  speaking,  they  owed  America  to  the 
zeal  and  discrimination  of  the  Dominican  friar  who  aided 
Columbus  in  his  great  enterprise.  (Applause.)  Another 
arose  after  Copernicus^— a  man  celebrated  for  his  scientific 
discovery  and  more  celebrated  system,  because  he  was 
made  the  hobby  of  those  who  attacked  the  Catholic 
Church,  although  he  was  himself  a  Catholic. 

Twenty-three  years  after  the  death  of  Copernicus  Gali- 
leo was  born.  He  became  convinced  that  the  eartli  moved 
round  the  sun.  So  far  there  was  no  harm  done.  Yet, 
strange  to  say,  the  Catholic  Church,  which  did  not  con- 
demn Copernicus,  which  did  not  condemn  Di  Chusa,  coa- 


304  'The  Catholic  Church  and  Science. 

demned  Galileo,  and  for  this  they  were  all  to  lie  down  and 
be  humbled  the  moment  Galileo's  name  was  mentioned. 
Books  and  books  have  been  published  of  the  history  of 
Galileo,  and  if  they  read  them  all  they  should  study  for 
six  or  seven  years.    Every  assailant  of  the  Catholic  Church 
said:   You  may  boast  of  the  Church's  antiquity,  of  the 
Church's  unity,  of  the  Church's  sanctity,  of  the  submis- 
sion of  the  Church's  members,  but  wait,  what  about  Gali- 
leo ?    Down  on  your  marrow-bones.    (Laughter.)    Now,  I 
will  in  a  few  words  explain  this  seeming  difficulty.     When 
Galileo  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  sun  was  stationary 
and  the  earth  was  moving  around  it,  instead  of  writing  a 
book  like  Di  Chusa's,  or  seeking  additional  proofs  or  rea- 
sons to  convince  the  scientists  of  the  day  that  his  theory 
was  correct,  what  did  he  do  ?    The  very  first  thing  Galileo 
did  was  to  lay  down  the  system  of  the  earth  moving  round 
the  sun  as  an  undoubted  fact,  as  an  incontrovertible  fact — 
to  call  everybody  that  did  not  believe  it  asses  and  fools. 
When  he  was  told  that  the  words  of  Scripture  seemed  to 
be  opposed  to  this  in  the  common  acceptation  of  them,  he 
laughed  at  it  and  said:  "0  my  dear  friends!   the  Scrip- 
tures in  a  great  many  tilings  are  inaccurate.    You  call  it  the 
Word  of  God.     If  it  is  the  Word  of  God,  you  must  ex- 
plain it  so  as  to  fit  into  my  philosophical  theory,  or  you 
are  all  asses  and  fools."     Now,  what  was  his  philosophical 
— his  astronomical  theory?    It  was  this:  that  the  earth 
moved  round  tlie  sun.     That  is  known  now  to  be  the  fact ; 
but  we  have  sufficient  reason  to  know  it ;  Galileo  had  not. 
Galileo  did  not  know  from  Adam  the  laws  of  gravita- 
tion ;  he  never  heard  of  such  a  thing  as  atmosphere — pres- 
sure upon  the  globe  ;  yet  he  asserted  that  the  eartli  moved 
round  the  sun.     What  reason  did  he  give  ?    "  Oh  !  "  says 
he,  "do  you  not  see  the  tides  come  in  and  go  out ;  sure 
that  shows   the  earth  is  moving  and  wabbling  about " 
(Laughter.)     "That  cannot  be,"  said  another  celebrated 
man,  "  the  motion  of  the  tides  is  produced  by  the  influence 
of  the  moon."     "  You  are  a  fool— an  ass,"  replied  Galileo. 
That  was  his  usual  answer.     When  the  pope  and  the 


The  Catholic  Church  and  Science,  305 

cardinals  heard  that  the  Scripture  was  to  be  made  subser- 
vient to  Galileo  ;  when  they  heard  that,  with  the  exception 
of  the  texts  that  bore  directly  and  immediately  on  faith 
and  morals,  all  the  rest  was  to  be  treated  as  allegory  and 
myth,  to  be  explained  according  to  the  whim  of  every  man, 
at  the  very  moment,  too,  when  Protestantism  in  its  out- 
break left  the  Scriptures  in  the  hands  of  the  multitude, 
who  were  running  wild  with  them ;  when  the  pope  and 
cardinals  heard  all  this  they  properly  called  on  the  bold 
Galileo  and  asked  him  what  he  meant.  And  why  should 
they  not  ?  What  did  Cardinal  Bellarmine  say  to  Galileo  ? 
These  were  the  words:  "We  cannot  so  bend  the  interpre- 
tation of  Scripture  as  to  suit  your  style  of  astronomy ; 
for  this  I  tell  you :  when  the  demonstration  shall  be  found 
to  establish  the  earth' s  motion,  it  will  be  proper  then  to 
interpret  the  Holy  ScrijDtures  otherwise  than  they  have 
hitherto  been  in  those  passages  which  mention  the  moving 
of  the  heavens  and  the  stability  of  the  world."  There  was 
the  answer  of  Rome  to  Galileo.  The  idea  that  the  earth 
moved  around  the  sun  was  an  established  scientific  fact. 
It  moved,  as  they  knew,  with  enormous  velocity.  They 
knew,  moreover,  that  its  motion  was  essentially  controlled 
by  the  laws  of  gravity  and  of  attraction.  Galileo,  who  de- 
clared the  Cliurch  should  submit  to  bend  the  Scriptures  to 
his  theory,  never  heard  of  the  laws  of  gravitation  in  his 
life,  and  he  was  three  years  dead  and  in  his  grave  when 
one  of  his  disciples  discovered  that  the  air  could  be 
weighed,  and  that  it  pressed  down  on  the  earth  with  tre- 
mendous pressure,  and  moved  with  the  earth.  He  spoke 
disrespectfully  and  ungratefully  of  Urban  V.,  but  what 
was  his  condemnation  ?  He  was  absolved  from  all  cen- 
sures ;  he  was  then  told  that  he  was  to  be  kept  in  mild 
imprisonment  during  the  pleasure  of  the  pope,  his  friend. 
That  imprisonment  lasted  four  days,  and  on  the  evening 
of  the  fourth  day  he  was  told  to  go  to  the  Florentine  am- 
bassador, after  which  he  was  sent  to  his  country-seat.  Yet 
Galileo  was  called  a  martyr  I 


Ireland's  Catholicity,  and  what 
Saved  It. 


The  following  lecture  was  delivered  by  Father  Burke  in  the  Assembly  Rooms, 
Wexford,  Ireland.  It  is  a  glowing  tribute  to  the  faithful  sons  and 
daughters  of  the  Green  Isle. 

MY  LORD,  LADIES,  AND  GENTLEMEiq":  The  subject 
■^  on  which  I  presume  to  address  you  this  evening  is,  in 
my  opinion  a  ad  mind,  the  grandest,  the  most  interesting, 
and  most  wonderful  that  could  occupy  your  attention,  or 
that  of  any  lecturer,  in  this  age  of  ours — "Ireland's  Ca- 
tholicity, and  how  it  was  saved."  This  subject,  I  say,  is 
interesting  to  you  Irishmen  ;  for  nothing  can  be  more  dear, 
nothing  can  offer  itself  for  consideration  with  equal  recom- 
mendation to  the  thoughtful  mind,  or  possess  such  attrac- 
tive interest,  as  the  study  of  your  religion  and  how  it  was 
saved.  Now,  tliis  proposition  involves  three  great  truths, 
which  immediately  present  themselves  to  me  when  I  say, 
"  Catholicity  in  Ireland,  and  what  saved  it."  The  first  is 
that  Ireland  is  Catholic ;  if  not,  how  on  earth  could  we 
talk  of  its  Catholicity  ?  It  is  true  all  Irishmen  are  not 
Catholics  ;  it  is  also  true  that  from  difference  of  religion  is 
produced,  from  time  to  time,  dissension  and  strife  at  which 
the  Catholic  spirit  must  revolt.  There  is  no  evil  over 
which  our  country  has  greater  cause  to  shed  tears  than 
the  strange  hatreds  and  dissensions  produced  amongst  us 
by  religious  differences.  All  Irishmen  are  not  Catholics  ; 
yet  Ireland  is  Catholic.  All  Englishmen  are  not  Protes- 
tants ;  yet  England  is  Protestant.    All  Italians  are  not 

806 


Ireland's  Catholicity,  and  what  Saved  It.       307 

Catholics — I  wish  they  were — and  yet  Italy  is  Catholic. 
In  the  same  manner  other  countries  take  their  religious 
denomination  from  the  religion  of  the  great  majority  of 
their  inhabitants.  Whatever  religion  the  sweei^ing  ma- 
jority of  a  country's  inhabitants  profess,  that  country 
claims  it  as  the  religion  of  the  state.  Surely  it  requires  no 
argument  to  prove  that  the  sweeping  majority  of  Irishmen 
are  Catholics. 

A  reverend  friend  of  mine  was  lately  called  as  a  witness 
on  a  trial,  and  when  he  got  up  on  the  green  cloth  to  give 
his  evidence  a  counsellor,  who  was  a  bigoted  Protestant, 
asked  him  first  what  was  his  name,  and  he  rei)lied  :  "  Rev. 
Charles  Davis,  commonly  called  Father  Charley.' '  The  next 
question  was :  "  How  many  Protestants  in  your  parish  ? " 
To  which  Father  Charles  replied:  "Not  one,  thanks  be  to 
God!"  (Laughter.)  So  that  in  this  parish  at  least  it  would 
be  true  to  say  that  the  sweeping  majority  was  Catholic. 
The  same  is  true  in  respect  of  Ireland.  The  second  in- 
volves a  plain  truth.  When  speaking  of  Ireland's  Catholi- 
city, and  how  it  was  saved,  we  see  by  that  sentence  that  it 
must  have  been  at  some  period  or  another  in  peril  or 
danger  ;  that  it  must  have  been  attacked  by  its  enemies, 
and  that  it  must  have  been  rescued  from  that  peril  or 
danger.  You  sometimes  say  that  is  a  wonderful  man  ;  his 
life  has  been  saved.  When  you  so  speak  you  take  it  for 
granted  that  his  life  must  have  been  in  great  danger  ;  that 
he  was  nearly  drowned,  kicked  to  death,  or  killed.  So 
Catholicity,  like  that  man,  was  assailed  with  dangers, 
when  its  enemies  stood  up  against  it  and  thought  to  up- 
root it  from  the  hearts  of  the  Irish  people ;  they  thought 
to  destroy  it  and  crush  it  under  the  earth,  and  it  must 
have  found  a  refuge  in  some  place. 

The  third  great  truth  involved  is,  that  if  it  was  saved 
there  must  have  been  some  great  agency  to  save  it,  either 
from  earth  or  heaven  (I  will  not  say  hell) ;  for  I  take  it  for 
granted  that  the  Catholic  Church,  preaching  as  it  does  the 
humanity  and  divinity  of  our  Saviour— that  He  was  God 
as  weU  as  man,  that  in  His  boundless  love  He  came  down 


308        Ireland's  Catholtcity,  and  what  Saved  It. 

from  heaven  to  redeem  man,  and  that  He  left  behind  Him 
certain  great  truths  to  be  acted  upon,  which  great  truths  are 
in  direct  antagonism  to  hell  and  its  agencies— it  would  be 
impossible  that  any  agency  of  hell  could  have  saved  Ire- 
land's Catholicity.  The  agency  must,  therefore,  have  been 
of  earth  or  of  heaven,  or  of  both.  I  ask  you  to  accept 
these  three  truths  as  principles  which  do  not  require  proof. 
You  are  aware  that  in  every  science  there  are  what  are 
called  postulates,  or  axiomata — simple  things  that  do  not 
require  proof,  but  are  evidently  true.  A  lecturer  on  na- 
tural history  who  kept  his  audience  for  an  hour  in  proving 
that  a  dog  wagged  his  tail  would  not  perform  a  more  un- 
necessary or  tedious  task  than  in  proving  the  postulates 
which  I  have  just  laid  down  for  your  acceptance.  It  is  as 
true  as  a  dog  wags  his  tail  that  Ireland  is  a  Catholic  na- 
tion, and  that  her  Catholicity  has  been  assailed  over  and 
over  again  ;  that  no  power  has  ever  been  able  to  root  that 
Catholicity  out  of  the  hearts  of  the  Irish  people  or  to  ex- 
tinguish that  torch  of  faith,  even  though  it  was  plunged 
into  the  ocean  of  a  nation's  blood.  Nothing,  then,  remains 
but  for  us  to  consider  the  two  parts  of  the  proposition : 
Ireland' s  Catholicity  and  what  saved  it. 

One  of  the  greatest  writers  and  deepest  thinkers  of  our 
age  has  left  behind  this  testimony  of  the  stability  of  the 
Catholic  Church  :  "  Never  since  the  world  was  created  was 
there  a  human  institution  so  wonderful  as  the  Catholic 
Church."  So  said  Mr.  Macaulay ;  but  he  was  mistaken. 
If  it  were  a  human  institution  it  would  not  be  here  to-day ; 
it  would  long  since  have  been  swept  from  the  face  of  the 
eartli,  like  other  great  human  institutions  whose  destruc- 
tion we  find  recorded  in  history.  Even  those  which  God 
Himself  made  and  beautified  with  His  own  hands  are 
swept  away.  Who  can  point  out  now  the  boundaries  of 
Paradise — that  garden  of  delights  where  man  in  the  joy 
of  his  newly-created  manhood  walked  abroad  ;  that  gar- 
den blooming  beneath  the  perpetual  smile  of  the  glorious 
sun,  where  the  voice  of  sinless  man  was  heard  by  all  liis 
creatures  with  obedience,  that  voice  which  arrested  the 


Ir eland's  Catholicity,  and  what  Saved  It.       309 

proud  eagle  in  its  fliglit,  brought  the  spotted  tiger  and  the 
striped  leopard  in  tame  submissiveness  to  the  foot  of  their 
lord,  to  whom  God  gave  them  as  obedient  subjects  ? 
Where  is  now  that  lovely  garden?  Can  any  traveller 
point  out  its  limits  ?  Can  any  adventurous  explorer  tell 
aught  of  its  whereabouts  ?  No ;  not  a  vestige  of  it  re- 
mains. Where  are  the  ancient  nations  once  so  powerful  ? 
All  swept  away  in  the  mighty  waves  which  it  has  pleased 
the  Almighty  God  to  send  upon  them.  Where  are  the 
ancient  cities  where  the  prophets  lifted  up  their  voices  ? 
They  are  gone ;  the  very  ruins  of  them  have  perished. 
Where  are  the  beauties  of  Greece  1  Where  the  glory  of 
her  kings  ?  Where  are  the  ancient  systems  of  philosophy  ? 
It  seems  as  if  nothing  in  the  order  of  nature  is  capable  of 
endurance  or  escaped  destruction  ;  but  the  Catholic  Church 
has  flourished  from  its  foundation,  and  is  at  the  present 
day  as  strong  and  vigorous,  as  fresh  and  beautiful,  as  it 
was  in  its  youth,  and  yet  a  philosopher  of  the  present  day 
will  call  it  a  human  institution. 

No  doubt  this  old  habit  would  naturally  induce  you  to 
consider  my  words  as  being  uttered  in  my  priestly  charac- 
ter. It  is  an  old  habit.  It  appeared  before  Ireton  at 
Limerick  on  the  person  of  Terence  O'Brien.  I  should  like 
to  address  you  as  a  priest,  but  I  speak  to  you  now  as  a 
lecturer  of  the  nineteenth  century.  A  lecturer  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  has  no  respect  for  right,  justice,  nor  princi- 
ple ;  he  is  a  sincere  admirer  of  Garibaldi  and  Prince  Bis- 
marck, of  powder  and  ball,  but  who  would  probably  be 
the  first  to  run  away  from  the  latter  on  account  of  his  be- 
lief in  them.  And  in  the  simple  capacity  of  a  lecturer  I 
confidently  assert  that  if  the  Catholic  Church  were  a  human 
institution  it  would  not  be  in  existence  to-day.  Why,  if 
the  four  Gospels  were  consumed — if  the  Sacred  Scripture 
itself  were  destroyed — Ireland  would  be  sufficient  to  fur- 
nish full  and  efficient  proof  that  the  Catholic  religion  has 
a  divine  origin. 

The  essence  of  Catholicity  is  contained  in  the  belief  in 
the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation,  and  every  heresy  which 


310        Ireland's  Catholicity,  and  what  Saved  It. 

has  sprung  up  ^om  the  time  of  Nicholas  the  Deacon  to  the 
last  and  strangest  form  of  intellectual  monstrosity  can  be 
traced  either  to  the  denial  of  the  divinity  or  the  sanctity  of 
God  made  man.  Without  full  and  thorough  belief  in  this 
mystery  there  can  be  no  Catholicity.  Any  doubt,  any 
wavering,  is  fatal ;  the  intelligence  and  the  heart  of  man 
must  be  filled  with  the  effulgence  of  the  belief  in  that 
truth ;  there  can  be  no  room  for  doubt,  nor  can  there  be 
any  hesitation  or  wavering  in  this  belief.  A  Connaught 
man  proudly  boasted  to  me  once  that  he  knew  more  than 
the  whole  of  them  (meaning  the  "  Jumpers  "  ) ;  for  he  said 
he  knew  Dr.  Gollogher'  s  Catechism.  And  so  he  did,  for 
this  contained  all  the  saving  truths  of  religion.  Referring 
to  "jumpers,"  it  might  be  truly  said  that  intellectual 
gymnastics  were  always  dangerous,  and  spiritual  jumping, 
unless  from  darkness  to  light,  was  damnable.  In  estimat- 
ing the  progress  of  religion  in  different  nations  the  quality 
of  the  soil  upon  which  the  seed  was  sown  must  be  taken 
into  account.  It  was  remarkable  that  the  Teutonic  or 
Sclavonic  nations  never  received  the  faith  gratefully  nor 
produced  abundant  fruits,  and  the  only  instance  which 
existed  of  an  order  of  knights  to  spread  the  Gospel  with 
the  sword  in  one  hand  and  the  Bible  in  the  other  was  that 
of  a  Teutonic  knight  who  went,  sword  in  hand,  to  spread 
the  Gospel  amongst  the  Russians.  The  Gospel  itself, 
which  was  a  two-edged  sword,  was  not  enough  for  them ; 
the  material  sword  should  be  also  employed  in  a  violent 
effort  to  convert  an  obstinate  nation.  Other  nations  were 
wanting  in  Catholic  instinct  and  feeling.  It  was  remarka- 
ble that  England  in  her  best  days  was  wanting  in  loyalty 
to  the  pope  of  Rome.  Though  England  held  the  Catholic 
faith  for  centuries,  she  never  warmed  to  the  pope ;  and 
amongst  the  Eastern  nations,  in  which  every  dogma  and 
every  little  point  of  doctrine  were  very  minutely  exam- 
ined and  were  fully  discussed,  yet  the  spirit  of  Catholicity 
was  never  able  to  produce  a  celibate  amongst  their  priest- 
hood. 

Never  since  Christ  founded  his  Church  did  the  seed  of 


IiiMi^AA'p's  Catholicity,  and  what  Saved  It,       311 

divine  faith  fall  upon  so  ricli,    so  deep,  so  congenial,  so 
grateful  a  soil,  or  produce  such,  abundant  fruit,  as  in  Ire- 
land.    What  are  the  characteristics  of  Catholicity  ?     The 
virtues  which  proclaim  most  directly  the  triumph  of  grace 
over  nature.      There  were    many  magnificent  virtues    in 
which  nature  and  grace  are  blended — in  which  it  is  hard  to 
draw  the  line  between  the  action  of  nature  and  grace.    For 
instance,  prudence  was  a  very  estimable  virtue,  and  yet  a 
man  might  be  prudent,  keep  his  eyes  open,  never  take  a 
leap  in  the  dark  ;  he  might  be  a  cute,  cunning,  long-headed 
fellow,  an  astute  Scotchman,  that  one  should  get  up  very 
early  in  the  morning  to  get  at  the  blind  side  of^— I  wish  the 
Irish  had  more  of  this  prudence — but  you  will  observe, 
after  all,  that  this  prudence  stopped  at  cunning.      There 
was  another  virtue — truthfulness,    one  which  he  greatly 
prized ;  but  the  natural  feeling  of  honor  and  self-respect 
may  prevent  a  man  from  practising  deceit.      The  man  of 
honor  says  :   "  My  word  is  my  bond."      But  though  these 
are  very  fine  virtues  they  are  merely  human,  and  there  13 
no  triumph  of  grace  over  nature  in  their  exercise.      There 
are  virtues  peculiar  to  Catholicity  which  require  the  ac- 
tion and  co-operation  of  grace.      That  of  virginal  purity  13 
one — a  grand  virtue,  which  purifies  all  the  faculties  and 
senses,  elevates  man  to  God,  turns  away  his  heart  from 
human  propensity,  and  centres  his  mind  in  heaven,  upon 
Him  who  came  down  from  heaven  to  become  the  Virgin' s 
Son. 

There  is  another  grace  peculiar  to  Catholicity  ;  it  is  a 
gift,  a  grace,  a  faculty  for  realizing  the  unseen.  Nature 
demands  the  exercise  of  the  senses  and  the  reasoning  pow- 
ers to  assure  itself  of  a  truth.  The  philosopher  may,  on  very 
slight  grounds,  elaborate  a  system  of  philosophy,  and  dis- 
cover scientific  truths  which  will  one  day  startle  the  world, 
as  in  the  case  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  discovering  the  law  of 
gravitation  from  the  falling  of  an  apple,  or  him  who,  from 
seeing  the  deadly  action  of  lightning  upon  an  animal  or  a 
tree,  is  enlivened  with  a  desire  to  direct  its  rapid  action 
and  utilize  it  for  the  carrying  on  of  communication  between 


312       Ireland's  Catholicity,  and  what  Saved  It. 

man  and  man.  These  things  are  the  result  of  human  in- 
telligence ;  but  the  first  feature  of  the  Christian  character 
is  the  realization  of  the  unseen  by  the  graces  of  faith  and 
hope.  The  essence  of  Christianity  lies  in  a  belief  of  the 
presence  of  God.  When  Christ  asked  the  apostles :  ' '  Whom 
do  people  say  that  I  am?"  and  they  answered :  "Some 
say  that  you  are  Elias,  others  that  you  are  Jeremias,  one 
of  the  prophets,"  He  answered  :  "  But  whom  say  ye  that 
I  am  ?"  Peter  immediately  fell  down  upon  his  knees  and 
said:  "Master,  you  are  Christ,  Son  of  the  living  God." 
Our  Lord  said  to  him  :  "  Blessed  art  thou,  Simon,  son  of 
John,  for  flesh  and  blood  never  taught  you  this,  but  my 
Father  who  is  in  heaven."  This  is  the  first  feature  of  the 
Christian  character — the  unseen  power  of  realizing  the  un- 
seen, the  power  of  knowing  it,  the  power  of  feeling  it,  the 
power  of  substantiating  it  to  the  soul  and  to  the  mind, 
until  out  of  that  substantiation  of  the  invisible  comes  the 
engrossing,  ardent  desire  of  man  to  make  that  invisible 
surround  him  by  its  infiuence  in  time  that  he  may  enjoy 
its  possession  in  eternity. 

Consequently  the  man  of  faith,  in  addition  to  being 
honest,  industrious,  truthful,  and  having  all  these  human 
virtues,  is  a  firm  believer.  It  costs  him  no  effort  to  believe 
in  a  mystery  because  he  cannot  comprehend  it,  because  he 
has  never  seen  it.  He  knows  it  is  true  ;  he  stakes  his  own 
life  upon  the  issue  of  that  divine  truth  which  he  has  ap- 
prehended by  the  act  of  the  intelligence  and  not  by  the 
senses.  Every  man  who  disputes  this  great  principle  of 
faith  as  realizing  the  unseen,  if  he  pushes  it  to  its  conclu- 
sion, must  be  an  infidel.  Therefore,  the  Spanish,  French, 
Italians,  and  continental  Catholics  generally,  when  they 
fall  away  from  the  true  faith,  go  directly  into  infidelity. 
There  is  no  medium  between  Catholicity  and  infidelity — a 
belief  in  the  divinity  of  the  Son  of  God  as  man  and  a  de- 
nial of  that  great  truth.  Wliere  humility  is  absent  there 
can  be  no  hope ;  for  the  proud  man  raises  up  his  arm 
against  the  power  that  crushes  him.  These,  then,  were  the 
distinguishing  characteristics  of  Catholicity,  and  no  country 


i- 

Ireland's  Catholicity,  and  what  Saved  It.       313 

ever  realized  them  so  fully  as  did  this  island  ;  for  amongst 
no  people  did  the  virtue  of  original  purity  rule  to  such  an 
extent,  and  never  was  there  people  whose  faith  and  hope 
were  more  sorely  tested-  Ireland  once  was  called  "Insula 
Demonorum,"  owing  to  the  savage  and  unsparing  charac- 
ter of  its  inhabitants.  The  volatile,  the  electric  spirit  of 
the  Celtic  character,  which  prompts  to  rush  vsdth  lightning 
speed  from  thought  or  feeling  to  action,  was  the  means  of 
embroiling  the  Irish,  so  terrible  in  their  anger,  in  so  many 
pernicious  wars  that  they  were  the  dread  of  other  nations. 
History,  which  was  a  faithful  and  impartial  record  of 
events,  was  not  written  to  flatter.  I  have  been  accepted  as 
a  lover  of  my  country,  but  I  have  never  flattered  my 
countrymen,  or  looked  kindly  upon  their  faults.  Before 
the  light  of  Christianity  overspread  this  island  the  inhabi- 
tants of  it  were  the  terror  of  other  countries,  as  none  could 
tell  the  moment  when  they  might  rush  upon  their  neigh- 
bors with  fiery  sword.  But  when  Patrick  brought  th© 
message  of  faith  amongst  them  its  light  and  influence 
spread  all  over  the  land  ;  virginal  purity  in  the  cloister, 
maidenly  purity  in  the  convent,  matronly  purity — which 
combined  the  modesty  of  the  virgin  with  the  love  of  the 
mother  in  the  household — was  the  immediate  result  of  the 
spread  of  Christianity  in  Ireland.  The  fierce  passions  of 
the  men  became  subdued.  The  bards  no  longer  attuned 
their  harps  to  sing  the  praises  of  their  kings,  or  celebrate 
the  glories  of  their  warriors.  On  one  occasion,  when  the 
king,  chieftains,  druids,  and  bards  were  assembled,  up 
rose  the  archminstrel  (Dubbac)  of  the  royal  monarch  of 
Tara,  in  the  might  of  his  intellect  and  in  the  glory  of 
his  voice  and  presence,  and,  lifting  up  his  harp  on  his 
hand,  he  said  :  "  Hear  me,  O  high  kings  and  chieftains 
of  the  land !  I  now  declare  that  the  man  who  comes  to 
us  speaks  from  God,  that  he  brings  a  message  from  God. 
I  bow  before  Patrick's  God.  He  is  the  true  God,  and  so 
long  as  I  have  this  harp,  it  shall  never  sound  again  save 
to  the  praises  of  Christianity  and  its  God."  And  the  king 
and  people  and  bards  and  warriors  alike  rose  promptly, 


314       Ireland's  Catholicity,  and  what  Saved  it, 

and  never  in  the  history  of  the  world  was  there  a  people 
that  so  embraced  the  light  of  faith,  took  it  into  their  hearts 
and  souls  and  blood,  as  did  Ireland  in  the  day  of  her  con- 
version. The  belief  in  the  great  mystery  of  the  Incarna- 
tion and  love  for  the  Blessed  Virgin  were  remarkable 
features  in  the  early  Irish  Christians,  and  to  this  day  we 
have  evidence  of  the  inculcation  of  that  love  by  Patrick, 
"when  teaching  that  mystery,  in  the  phrases  of  the  Irish 
language  by  which  our  Lord  and  His  Virgin  Mother  are 
spoken  of  as  ^'' Muire  Mathair''^ — "Mary  Mother,"  and 
^^ Mac  na  Maighdure'''' — "The  Virgin's  Son."  It  is  im- 
portant to  bear  in  mind  that  these  ancient  pagans  were  not 
gross  idolaters  ;  they  had  too  much  nobility  of  character  to 
bow  down  before  a  Venus,  a  Saturn,  a  Mars,  or  a  Mercury. 
Pagan  Ireland  scorned  to  worship  stocks  or  stones,  whether 
they  represented  beauty  as  Venus,  or  theft  as  Mercury. 
It  would  as  soon  bow  down  to  a  butter-fly  or  a  magpie.  It 
scorned  to  worship  anything  except  the  glorious  sun, 
whose  rising  was  hailed  by  the  clash  of  harps,  whilst  the 
bards  sang  his  glories  and  the  people  all  bowed  down  in 
adoration  to  him  who  gave  them  light  and  life.  But  when 
Patrick  spoke  to  them  of  the  Eternal  Light  which  never 
changed  and  never  set  they  joyfully  embraced  the  faith. 
The  respect  and  love  for  purity  was  a  remarkable  feature 
in  the  Irish  character,  and  it  was  the  cause  of  the  English 
invasion.  Wexford  had  reason  to  be  proud  of  many  things, 
but  she  had  no  reason  to  feel  any  pride  in  Dermot  Mac- 
Murrough.  The  moment  he  violated  the  sanctity  of  the 
marriage  tie,  that  moment  the  people  rose  up  against  him, 
stripped  the  crown  from  his  brow,  and  shattered  the 
sceptre  in  his  hand,  as  one  guilty  of  this  crime  should 
never  make  or  administer  the  laws  of  the  country. 

And  then  why  did  the  Irish  rise  up  against  the  Danet 
He  did  not  come  amongst  them  to  make  war  for  the  pur- 
pose of  conquest ;  he  came  to  ask,  as  he  had  asked  in  Brit- 
tany, for  permission  to  be  a  settler  for  purposes  of  trade 
and  commerce.  But  he  came  in  the  name  of  a  false  God, 
Thor ;  he  came  denying  the  divinity  of  the  Son  of  God  and 


Ireland* s  Catholicity,  and  what  Saved  it.        315 

mocking  the  Virgin  Mother ;  and  that  is  why  the  Irish  rose 
up  against  hira,  fought  on  hillside  and  in  the  valleys  till  the 
country  became  almost  depopulated  and  savage ;  and  never 
did  they  lay  down  the  sword  till  on  that  Good  Friday  at 
Clontarf,  following  the  crucifix,  which  was  held  aloft,  they 
hurled  the  foreign  unbeliever  in  the  Incarnation  into  the 
sea.  (Great  applause.)  Though  the  Irish  drove  out  the 
Dane,  they  were  never  able  to  repel  the  Saxon  or  Norman 
invaders,  and  this  I  attribute  to  the  fact  that  the  Irish  were 
not  united  among  themselves.  What  saved  Ireland's 
Catholicity  ?  I  characterize  as  blasphemy  the  assertion 
that  it  was  saved  by  opposition  to  England,  or  by  any 
human  agency.  I  attribute  the  salvation  of  Ireland's 
Catholicity  to  the  divine  power  of  God  alone.  The  prin- 
ciples which  were  rooted  in  the  heart  and  soul  of  Ireland 
were  attached  in  denial  to  the  divinity  of  God  made  man, 
in  the  rejection  of  the  Virgin  Mother  as  being  entitled  to 
honor,  and  in  the  attempt  to  overthrow  the  authority  of 
the  pope  of  Rome.  To  these  principles  Ireland  was  ever 
true  from  her  earliest  conversion  to  Catholicity.  The 
Church  had  saved  herself.  The  ant  might  as  well  come 
out  of  the  molehill  and  say  the  sun  shines  for  me  alone 
as  for  any  man  to  say  the  Church  was  saved  by  mere 
human  agency.  Ireland' s  faith  was  saved  by  God,  and  by 
no  other  agency  could  it  be  saved. 


A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education. 


The  following  sermon  was  preached  in  the  Cathedral  of  Killarney,  Ireland. 
It  was  preached  in  aid  of  the  schools  under  the  care  of  the  Presentation 
Order  of  Monks  in  that  place.  The  desire  to  listen  to  the  inspired  elo- 
quence of  Father  Burke,  if  not  also  to  assist  an  important  and  meritori- 
ous charily,  gathered  into  the  large  edifice  an  audience  so  vast  as  to 
throng  every  part  of  the  budding.  The  sermon  is  one  of  the  most 
powerful  of  Father  Burke's  discourses. 

In  the  name  of  the  Father,  and  of  the  Son,  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost.    Amen. 

The  Gospel- of  this  the  twenty-secoud  Sunday  after  Pentecost  is  taken  from 
the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Matthew,  9th  chapter  : 

^^  At  that  time :  As  Jesus  was  speaking  to  the  multitude,  behold  a  certain 
ruler  came  up  and  adored  Him,  saying  :  Lord,  my  daughter  is  even  now 
dead  ;  but  come,  lay  thy  hand  upon  her,  and  she  shall  live.  And  Jesus, 
rising  up,  followed  him,  with  His  disciples.  And  behold  a  woman  who 
was  troubled  with  an  issue  of  blood  twelve  years,  came  beliind  Him,  and 
touched  the  hem  of  His  garment.  For  she  said  within  herself  :  If  I  shall 
touch  only  His  garment,  I  shall  be  healed.  But  Jesus  turning  and  seeing 
her,  said  :  Be  of  good  heart,  daughter  ;  thy  faith  hath  made  thee  whole. 
And  the  woman  was  made  whole  from  that  hour.  And  when  Jesus  was 
come  into  the  house  of  the  ruler,  and  saw  the  minstrels  and  multitude 
making  a  rout,  He  said  :  Give  place  ;  for  the  girl  is  not  dead,  but  sleep- 
eth.  And  they  laughed  Him  to  scorn.  And  when  the  multituf^e  was 
put  forth.  He  went  in  and  took  her  by  the  hand.  And  the  maid  arose. 
And  the  fame  hereof  went  abroad  into  all  that  country." 

"  And  he  took  her  by  the  hand,  and  the  maid  arose." 

TVEARLY  BELOVED  BRETHREN,  the  miracle  recorded 
^  in  this  day's  Gospel  of  the  raising  of  the  ruler's  child 
to  life  is  beautifully  indicative  and  symbolical  of  the 
great  charity  and  the  great  cause  for  which  we  are  assem- 
bled here  to-day.  We  are  come  together  to  take  thought 
for  the  proper  education  of  the  children  of  our  poor; 

810 


A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education.  317 

we  are  come  together  to  consider  liow  necessary  religion 
is  as  forming  an  element  of  tliat  education,  bow  utterly- 
worthless  their  training  would  be  without  religion  ;  and, 
consequently,  we  are  come  together  to  record,  by  our  gifts 
and  by  our  charity,  our  determination  that  the  children  of 
our  people  shall  have  the  first  and  the  greatest  of  all 
blessings — namely,  a  thoroughly  religious  and  Catholic 
education. 

Now,  consider,  dearly-beloved  brethren,  the  circum- 
stances of  the  miracle  which  I  have  read  for  you  as  record- 
ed in  the  Gospel.  A  young  girl,  the  daughter  of  a  prince 
in  the  land,  sickens  and  is  brought  to  the  very  point  of 
death.  Her  father,  who  was  a  very  rich  man,  no  doubt 
tried  by  every  means  to  preserve  her  in  health,  to  heal  her 
in  sickness,  and  to  restore  her.  He  called  in,  no  doubt,  the 
ablest  physicians  in  the  land ;  but  they  could  do  nothing 
for  his  child.  Gradually  her  strength  decayed  and  the 
light  faded  out  of  her  eyes,  the  pulsation  of  her  heart 
ceased,  and  all  men  said  she  was  dead  and  beyond  all 
remedy  now.  Her  father,  finding  that  human  physicians 
could  not  help  her,  bethought  him,  in  a  happy  moment, 
that  there  was  a  divine  Physician  in  the  land,  one  before 
whose  action  death  itself  was  obliged  to  yield,  one  whose 
word  was  potent  not  merely  to  recall  the  sick  to  health 
but  to  recall  the  very  dead  to  life  ;  and  to  Him,  under  the 
coercion  of  his  sorrow,  the  father  went,  and,  adoring  Him, 
said:  "My  child  is  dead,  O  Lord;  but  come  Thou  and 
lay  Thy  hand  upon  her,  and  at  the  touch  of  Thy  hand  she 
shall  live."  Christ  our  Lord  entered  the  house  and  said : 
"The  maiden  is  not  dead,  but  only  sleepeth.  Tlie  element 
of  life,"  He  said,  "is  in  her  still."  And,  therefore,  put- 
ting out  those  who  filled  the  house  with  the  noise  of  their 
vain  lamentations.  He  entered  in.  He  took  what  appeared 
to  be  the  dead  hand  of  the  child,  and,  looking  upon  her. 
He  commanded  her  mentally  to  arise ;  and  the  moment 
that  His  hand  touched  her  her  eyes,  opening,  saw  the  light 
again,  her  hands  quickened  into  life,  the  warm  blood  throb- 
bed around  her  reviving  heart,  and  she  arose  in  the  fulness 


^^- 


318  A  Plea  fob  Catholic  Education. 

of  lier  health  and  strength,  restored  by  the  touch  Qt  the 
hand  of  the  Lord. 

But,  O  deaiiy  beloved !  how  different  was  the  life  to 
which  she  now  rose  to  that  which  she  enjoyed  before — 
how  blessedly  different  was  the  new  life  upon  which  she 
entered  to  that  from  which  she  appeared  to  have  bade 
adieu  by  death  !  She  had  lived  the  years  of  her  youth  and 
maidenhood  in  joy ;  yet  she  had  never  known  tlie  Lord 
God ;  she  had  never  seen  the  face  of  God,  she  had  never 
heard  His  voice,  nor  felt  the  touch  of  His  hand.  But 
now,  when  she  opens  her  eyes  to  her  restored  life,  the 
very  first  object  that  she  sees  is  the  face  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ ;  and  the  moment  that  the  glance  of  her  eyes 
rested  upon  Him,  that  moment  a  divine  faith  sprang  up 
within  her  soul,  and  she  exclaimed  with  the  prophet :  "  Vidi 
Dominum,^^  "  I  have  seen  the  Lord  with  my  eyes,  I  have 
beheld  my  Saviour."  She  felt  the  touch  of  His  hand  as  it 
grasped  hers,  and  a  thrill  of  divine  love  penetrated  her 
heart,  and  she  found  the  object  of  her  love  in  the  divine 
Person  of  our  divine  Lord  Jesus  Christ ;  a  new  knowledge 
entered  her  mind,  a  new  passion  entered  her  heart ;  and 
that  knowledge  and  that  divine  love  became  the  very  sub- 
stance of  the  happy  life  which  the  Son  of  God  restored  to 
her  in  that  hour.  In  vain  would  any  other  hand  have 
touched  her  save  His  ;  in  vain  would  any  other  voice  have 
spoken  to  her  save  His. 

That  young  girl  lying  there — not  dead,  yet  apparently 
dead,  and  declared  by  all  men  to  be  dead ;  not  dead, 
though  dead  to  others  yet  only  sleeping  in  the  sight  of 
the  Lord — was  a  symbol  and  a  type  of  our  human  nature. 
Gifted  by  Almighty  God  in  its  first  creation  with  a  glori- 
ous life — a  life  described  to  us  in  Scripture  as  a  life  of 
knowledge,  for  the  unfallen  man  knew  all  things  ;  as  a  life 
of  empire,  for  unto  the  hands  of  unfallen  man  God  gave 
the  earth  and  the  fulness  thereof ;  as  a  life  of  immortality, 
for  no  sentence  of  death  was  yet  recorded  against  him  ;  as 
a  life  of  sanctity,  for  the  graces  of  God  were  upon  him, 
and  his  conversation  was  with  the  Most  High — thus  gifted, 


A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education.  319 

maj^lived  a  glorious  life  till  there  came  upon  him  a  fatal 
sickness  and  the  death-stroke  of  sin.  Then  all  the  super- 
natural was  lost,  the  divine  knowledge  faded  slowly  away  ; 
truth  was  diminished  amongst  the  sons  of  men,  as  the 
light  faded  slowly  with  the  sickness  away  from  out  the 
eyes  of  the  young  maiden  ;  strength  and  power  were  lost 
to  him,  and  his  hands  fell  powerless  by  his  side ;  igno- 
rance and  error,  darkness  and  idolatry  settled  in  upon  his 
mind  ;  the  slavery  of  sin  came  upon  his  will  and  the 
powerlessness  of  sin  came  upon  his  hands.  In  vain  did 
philosophers  age  after  age  prescribe  for  the  darkness  of 
that  intelligence  and  for  the  weakness  of  that  enslaved 
will.  In  vain  did  earthly  physicians  come  with  their 
remedies  of  earthly  knowledge  and  of  mere  human  civili- 
zation. They  could  not  raise  the  apparent  dead.  Yet  the 
nature  was  not  dead,  it  was  only  sleeping — the  long  sleep 
of  four  thousand  years — awaiting  the  quickening  voice  of 
its  Saviour  and  the  touch  of  His  God-like  hand. 

He  came.  He  breathed  upon  the  face  of  that  dead 
nature,  and  out  of  the  breath  of  His  lips,  out  of  the  crea- 
tive sound  of  his  voice,  light  came  into  those  darkened 
eyes,  and  they  beamed  again  by  divine  faith  and  looked 
upon  the  face  of  their  Saviour ;  love  came  into  that  long 
degraded  and  pulseless  heart — the  first  love  returned,  the 
love  long  forgotten,  the  pure  love  of  God.  Grace  came  to 
quicken  those  dried  bones,  dried  up  from  the  furnace-fire 
o.f  passion  and  of  sin,  and  where  sin  abounded  grace  came 
to  abound  still  more  ;  and  under  the  presence  of  our  divine 
Lord,  at  the  touch  of  His  hand,  at  the  sound  of  His  voice, 
our  human  nature  arose  to  something  even  greater  and 
grander  than  that  from  which  it  fell  in  Adam.  For  from 
the  primeval  innocence  of  the  unf alien  Adam  it  arose  to 
the  infinitely  higher  grandeur  of  personal  union  with  the 
Son  of  God,  who  seated  it  upon  the  throne  on  his  Father's 
right  hand  in  heaven. 

Moreover,  that  young  maiden,  lying  there  apparently 
dead,  but  only  sleeping,  is  also  symbolical  of  the  human 
soul,  created  by  Almighty  God  for  such  grand  and  holy 


320  A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education. 

purposes — ^for  the  life  of  knowledge,  of  love,  of  perfect,  of 
true  freedom  as  a  child  of  Grod  ;  created  by  Almighty  God 
with  such  noble  powers — with  the  eye  of  knowledge  pene- 
trating and  mastering  all  the  laws  and  all  the  mysterious 
powers  which  govern  this  world,  but  looking  far  higher, 
and  with  the  eye  of  faith  penetrating  the  clouds  and  real- 
izing the  unseen  God  ;  with  the  power  of  love  enduring  in 
its  human  form,  because  of  its  chastity  and  its  fidelity, 
worthy  even  in  its  human  form  to  be  associated  with  grace, 
made  the  channel  of  divine  influences,  and  consequently 
consecrated  by  the  sacramental  seal  of  marriage — worthy 
even  in  its  human  form  to  typify  that  highest  of  unions, 
the  espousal  of  the  Son  of  God  with  His  Church ;  and 
capable  of  far  higher  flights  of  love — capable  of  the  strong 
divine  love  of  which  God  the  Holy  Ghost  tells  us  that  it 
is  powerful  and  strong  as  death — capable  of  the  love  of  a 
life- long  consecration — capable  of  divine  love  so  pure  as  to 
make  man  upon  this  earth  even  as  an  angel  of  God  ;  so 
powerful  as  to  be  able  easily  not  only  to  restrain,  but  al- 
most to  annihilate  the  strong  and  terrible  passions  of  a 
nature  which  though  healed  is  still  corrupt ;  gifted  by  the 
Almighty  God  with  a  freedom  the  most  perfect,  a  freedom 
which  is  a  reflection  of  the  very  action  of  God  Himself, 
which  is  essential  and  eternal  freedom,  a  freedom  capable 
of  the  noblest  resolves  and  of  the  mightiest  sacrifices 
under  the  light  of  faith  and  under  the  strong  impulse  of 
divine  charity. 

Such  are  the  powers,  dearly  beloved,  with  which  Al- 
mighty God  endows  the  human  soul.  But,  like  the  maiden 
sleeping,  as  recorded  in  the  Gospel,  these  powers  lie  dor- 
mant in  the  soul  of  man.  The  power  of  knowledge  is 
there — the  craving  for  knowledge  may  be  there  ;  yet  that 
power  may  never  develop  itself  unless  the  hand  of  the  edu- 
cator be  there  to  lead  the  child  on  from  light  unto  light. 
The  power  of  love — the  holiest  in  its  human  form,  the 
holiest  in  its  divine  form — is  there,  yet  that  power  will 
never  develop  itself  into  the  grandeur  of  the  higher  hu- 
man, much  less  divine,  love,  unless  the  hand  of  the  educa- 


'A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education.  331 

tor  be  there  to  point  out  the  eternal  laws  and  the  high 
principles  which  should  govern  the  heart  and  the  affections 
of  man  ;  that  power  will  only  develop  itself  into  the  brutal 
development  of  sellish  sensuality,  unless  the  hand  of  the 
educator  be  there.  Freedom  of  will  is  there  ;  but  that 
freedom  is,  perhaps,  the  very  first  attribute  of  the  soul  that 
will  be  crushed  and  destroyed  by  the  overmastering  sla- 
very of  the  passions  to  which  it  falls  the  first  victim,  un- 
less the  hand  of  the  educator  be  there  to  develop  that 
freedom,  and  to  preserve  its  integrity  by  teaching  the  true 
and  beautiful,  which  is  God. 

And  now  as  the  very  first  necessity  of  man  is  to  live — 
as  the  very  first  and  absolute  necessity  of  that  young  girl 
in  the  Gospel  was  to  have  her  life  restored  to  her,  which 
the  vain  lamentations  of  those  mourners  never  would  have 
given  back — so,  dearly  beloved,  the  very  first  necessity  of 
the  soul  of  man  is  to  develop  its  power  by  education.  De- 
prive it  of  all  instruction,  deprive  it  of  education,  leave  it 
untouched  and  undeveloped — the  eyes  are  there,  but  they 
shall  never  open  to  the  light ;  the  heart  is  there,  but  it 
shall  never  feel  one  throb  or  impulse  of  holy  love  ;  the 
will  was  there,  but  it  has  almost  utterly  perished,  under 
the  mastery  and  the  enslaving  influences  of  the  sinful  pas- 
sions. Leave  that  soul  untouched  by  education  ;  leave  it 
utterly  uninstructed,  and  follow  the  process  of  life  as  de- 
veloped in  the  child.  The  body  grows  apace  with  its  pas- 
sions, with  its  instincts,  with  base,  brutal  inclinations,  and 
corrupt  nature  cries  loudly  for  its  food  of  sin.  The  eye 
beholds  the  lurking  mystery  of  iniquity  in  all  things,  the 
taste  seeks  for  its  own  gratification,  even  in  the  most  beast- 
ly indulgence  ;  every  sense  of  the  body,  matured  to  its  ac- 
tion by  years,  cries  out  for  its  own  enjoyment.  The  soul, 
meantime,  remains  in  the  grown  man,  not  growing  with  his 
growth,  not  developing  with  his  development ;  it  remains 
an  embryo  of  all  that  was  great,  an  infant  that  has  never 
learned  to  think  and  speak,  to  use  its  members,  to  use  its 
powers,  an  infant  spirit  in  the  body  of  a  gigantic  man — 
gigantic  in  all  the  beastly  and  inferior  proportions  of  his 


323  A  Flea  for  Catholic  Education. 

nature,  a  giant  of  iniquity,  a  giant  of  dishonesty,  a  giant 
of  impurity  and  sensuality  of  every  kind  ;  and  why  ?  Be- 
cause the  body  becomes  ail  the  more  developed  in  its  pas- 
sionate and  evil  inclinations  from  the  absolute  want  of  the 
corresponding  development  of  soul.  Oh  !  there  are  pas- 
sions, there  are  brutalities  suflBcient  to  make  the  greatest 
criminal  that  ever  cursed  the  earth,  and  not  a  single  ray  of 
knowledge  to  guide  him  in  the  management  of  those  pas- 
sions, no  vivifying  hope  for  the  future,  no  restraining 
power,  no  generous  impulse  to  anything  high,  unselfish, 
or  holy ;  no  regrets  for  sin  in  the  past,  no  hope  for  the 
future,  no  consolation  in  his  sorrow,  no  soothing  remem- 
brance even  in  the  blank  and  vacant  halls  of  his  memory. 
Man  is  worse  than  the  mere  animal,  because  all  that  is 
divine  and  spiritual  in  him  has  been  allowed  to  perish,  and 
nothing  but  the  mere  brute  has  been  developed. 

Such  is  man  without  education.  He  is  the  natural 
enemy  of  his  fellow-man.  For  all  human  society  is  based 
upon  an  intercommunication  of  intelligence,  of  mind  with 
mind,  intellect  with  intellect,  and  the  reason  why  there  is 
no  such  state  as  society  amongst  inferior  animals  is  because 
they  have  no  intellect,  they  cannot  communicate  one  with 
another,  they  have  no  intelligence,  and  therefore  each  one 
leads  its  own  mute  and  isolated  existence,  concentrated 
upon  its  own  individuality,  and  in  the  fulfilment  of  na- 
ture's laws.  But  nature  has  imposed  no  such  strong  laws, 
no  such  unvarying  instincts  upon  man,  because  man  is  to 
be  governed  not  merely  as  an  individual  but  as  a  member 
of  society,  by  communicating  intellectually  with  his  fel- 
low-man. Now,  the  man  who  is  utterly  uninstructed  is  in- 
capable of  such  intellectual  communication.  Consequently 
he  is  flung  back  upon  his  solitary  self,  in  which  he  finds 
80  little  that  is  good,  so  little  that  is  holy,  that  the  very 
idea  of  goodness  and  holiness  is  a  stranger  to  him  ;  and 
the  greatest  criminal  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  the  greatest 
enemy  to  human  society,  is  the  man  who  is  utterly  and 
entirely  ignorant. 

How  shaU  we  heal  him  ?     There  is  the  patient  before 


A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education,  323 

us.  Who  shall  heal  him  ?  Shall  we,  like  the  father  of  the 
girl  in  this  day's  Gospel,  call  in  the  mere  human  physi- 
cian and  ask  him:  "Can  you  give  life  to  this  seeming 
death  I  The  soul  is  not  dead  but  sleepeth.  Arouse  its 
dormant  powers,  bring  forth  its  hidden  faculties,  open 
them  to  the  glorious  light  of  knowledge !  Can  you  do 
this  ?  Can  you  bring  out  a  man  where  now  there  is  only 
a  child  ?  He  has  not  yet  grown  into  that  giant  of  iniquity 
which  he  is  sure  to  become.  He  has  not  yet  grown  into 
that  mere  brute  which  he  is  sure  to,  if  left  in  utter  igno- 
rance. Body  and  soul  are  alike  still  young,  still  in  their 
infant  state.  Will  you  bring  them  out  ;  will  you  bring 
them  to  the  fulness  of  their  being?"  And  the  world 
answers:  "Oh!  yes.  I  will  educate  the  child.  I  will 
bring  him  to  the  fulness  of  his  manhood.  I  will  make  a 
man  of  him.  I  will  give  him  all  knowledge  that  is 
necessary  for  him."  The  world  says  this  to-day  with 
unusual  confidence.  And  the  Church  stands  up  and  says 
to  the  world  :  "  You  cannot  do  it.  Without  the  element 
of  religion  largely  blended  in  with  your  education,  without 
the  element  of  divine  truth  and  divine  grace  going  hand 
in  hand  with  all  that  you  teach  of  worldly  knowledge,  I 
tell  you  you  never  can  educate  the  man  in  the  child." 

And  here  it  is,  dearly -beloved  brethren,  that  the  great 
contest  begins  which  is  raging  all  over  the  world  to-day  in 
every  land  and  in  every  clime — the  Church  of  God  on  one 
side  crying  out :  "  Let  me  get  to  the  children,"  and  the 
world  on  the  other  hand  saying:  "  I  will  educate  them; 
do  you  stand  aside,  stand  aside!"  The  world  seems  to 
say  to  the  Church  of  God  in  this  our  day  :  "  Stand  aside  I 
There  was  a  time  when  you  were  able  to  educate  the  world, 
yet  infant  in  its  civilization.  To-day  it  has  outgrown  you ; 
the  child  has  grown  to  be  a  man  ;  he  is  emancipated  from 
his  mother."  "Stand  aside,  then,"  the  world  seems  to 
say,  as  it  drives  the  Jesuit  from  his  college  and  closes  up 
seminaries  of  learning  which  were  held  and  supported  by 
the  Catholic  Church  in  many  lands.  As  school  after 
school  was  closed,  a  standard  is  unfurled,  and  floats  over 


324  A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education. 

every  city  in  the  world  to-day,  with,  these  words  upon  it : 
*'  Education  without  religion  !  Education  without  God  I 
Education  confining  itself  to  the  wide  horizon  of  human 
knowledge!"  There  is  the  great  heresy  of  to-day,  with 
which  the  Church  of  Grod  is  contending  with  might  and 
main.  But,  dearly  beloved,  the  Church  has  never  been 
afraid  of  investigation  and  argument.  The  Church  of  God 
calls  upon  her  children  for  a  reasonable  service,  for  a 
loyalty  founded  not  upon  ignorance,  but  upon  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  subject  and  investigation  of  the  truth. 
Wliich  of  these  two  is  right :  the  world,  that  says,  "  I  can 
make  the  child  a  man  for  every  purpose,"  or  the  Church, 
that  says,  "  You  cannot  do  it  without  me  "  ? 

First  of  all,  what  is  this  world  that  so  proudly  claims 
to-day,  in  the  form  of  the  state  or  in  the  form  of  some 
societies  or  corporations — what  is  this  world  that  so  proudly 
claims  the  primacy  in  all  knowledge,  primacy  in  all  wis- 
dom, and  consequently  the  right  to  educate  the  people  and 
their  children  independent  of  and  without  connection  with 
the  Catholic  Church  ?  What  is  this  world  %  For  fifteen 
hundred  years  of  its  first  Christianity  this  world  was  con- 
tent to  sit  down  and  to  learn  at  the  feet  of  the  Church.  In 
those  days  there  was  no  talk  of  separation  of  education 
from  religion.  In  those  days  the  monk  or  the  priest  was 
the  schoolmaster  as  well  as  the  minister  of  religion  all  the 
world  over,  and  men  were  content  to  be  taught  by  him. 
The  Church  found  the  world  plunged  in  the  worst  form  of 
barbarism.  She  found  the  world  in  all  the  civilization  of 
the  ancient  time,  crowned  with  worldly  wisdom,  yet  in  its 
wisdom  not  knowing  God ;  and  that  very  Augustan  era 
which  beheld  the  birth  of  our  Divine  Lord  into  this  world 
and  the  foundation  of  His  Church,  although  it  was  the 
brightest  and  most  civilized  epoch  recorded  in  ancient  his- 
tory, it  was  at  the  same  time  degraded  by  crimes  so  in- 
famous that  the  apostle  will  not  trust  himself  to  name 
them,  and  by  excesses  so  terrible  that  the  world  itself  waa 
unable  to  bear  the  burden  of  its  own  sins.  Then  came  the 
disruptiopi  of  the  Roman  Empire — the  bursting  of  that 


A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education.  325 

mighty  empire,  inflated  with  pride  of  power  and  with  sin, 
and  stained  with  the  blood  of  countless  martyrs  of  God. 
On  the  disruption  of  that  empire  came  private  chaos  and 
barbarism,  from  which  the  world  has  emerged  slowly  and 
by  the  action  of  centuries ;  and  the  Church  of  God  was 
called  upon  as  the  only  existing  power  in  the  world  to  do 
in  a  few  centurie-s  what  men  had  taken,  by  their  own 
efforts,  four  thousand  years  to  accomplish  so  imperfectly. 

She  began  her  work  of  civilization  ;  she  brought  the 
nations  out  from  chaos  and  darkness  to  order  and  into 
light ;  she  established  the  principles  of  right  and  justice, 
and  obedience  to  law.  She  established  nations  and  king- 
doms. She  led  the  world  on  to  that  high  i)oint  of  civiliza- 
tion and  human  refinement  at  which  it  had  arrived  at  the 
very  moment  when  the  signal  for  revolt  was  given  and 
human  intelligence  broke  loose  from  the  Church  of  God. 
Three  hundred  years  have  now  passed  since  Martin  Lu- 
ther declared  tliat  the  intelligence  of  man  should  no  longer 
be  held  in  obedience  to  the  Catholic  Church,  for  men  had 
now  a  sufficient  knowledge  to  institute  a  philosophy  for 
themselves,  to  choose  their  own  theology,  to  establish 
their  own  principles  of  politics  and  of  government ;  and 
for  three  hundred  years  they  have  tried  their  hand  at  this 
mighty  experiment.     Let  us  see  what  the  results  are. 

The  results  are  to-day,  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  that  the  work  of  intellectual  emancipation,  as  it 
is  called,  has  produced  its  fruits  ;  men  boast  of  the  glori- 
ous work  which  they  have  done  ;  men  found  upon  it  their 
claim  to  educate  the  whole  world,  and  to  tell  the  Church 
of  God  to  stand  aside  !  But  let  us  see,  by  examining 
briefly  for  a  moment,  what  these  boasted  fruits  are.  In 
speculative  philosophy  as  long  as  the  world  was  under  the 
guidance  of  the  Catholic  Church,  in  her  schools  and  uni- 
versities, philosophy — speculative  philosophy — led  up 
through  every  light  of  human  knowledge,  and  brought 
man  to  seek  the  origin  of  his  being  in  the  action  of  the 
creative  hand  of  God,  and  in  the  inspiration  of  a  spiritual 
and  immortal  soul  from  the  very  mouth  of  God  into  him. 


326  A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education. 

Oh  !  how  grand  was  that  philosopliy  which  taught  man  tlie 
true  nobility  of  his  being  by  tracing  his  origin  to  God, 
which  taught  man  the  obligation  of  every  highest  virtue 
by  showing  Mm  that  he  was  a  divine  image,  and  that  that 
image  should  be  brought  out  in  him.  Now,  for  three  hun- 
dred years  they  have  speculated  on  this  great  question, 
and  at  length  the  new  evangelist  of  the  nineteenth  century 
mounts  into  the  pulpit  of  modem  philosophy  and  gravely 
tells  the  learned  world  that  man  is  nothing  but  the  de- 
veloi^ment  of  an  ape,  that  his  ancestor  was  a  monkey — that 
he  is  but  the  image  of  au  improved  ape,  and  not  at  all  the 
image  of  God  !  Oh  !  degradation  of  thought  and  of  mind, 
following,  and  following  JQStly,  upon  that  pride  of  intel- 
lect that  broke  loose  from  the  Church  of  God.  And  those 
men  who  advocate  this  theory — the  men  who  come  before 
us,  on  their  own  showing,  as  but  a  better  Idnd  of  ape — 
they  ask  us  Christians  to  hand  over  our  children  to  them 
to  be  educated  by  them  and  taught  the  observance  of  the 
fourth  commandment — "  Honor  thy  father  and  thy  mo- 
ther " — by  being  told  that  that  father  and  that  mother  are 
one  step  nearer  the  ape  than  the  child  who  is  commanded 
to  honor  them  !  In  moral  philosophy  what  have  their 
speculations  brought  them  to  ? 

They  have  brought  them  to  the  last  development  of  the 
principle  of  private  judgment  in  morals,  to  a  return  to  the 
worst  form  of  the  polygamy  of  by-gone  times,  and  the  con- 
secration of  tlie  principle  that  man's  passions  are  not  to  be 
controlled,  or  tliat  they  are  to  find  their  fulfilment  in  the 
utter  ti-ampling  out  of  every  light  of  Christianity,  and  of 
grace,  and  of  godliness !  What  are  their  principles  of 
government?  They  have  arrived  at  this  sage  principle, 
that  it  is  no  longer  the  justice,  tliat  it  is  no  longer  the 
truth,  that  it  is  no  longer  the  sanctity  of  a  cause  tliat  is  to 
uphold  it ;  but  that  brute  force— the  force  of  the  stronger 
— is  the  one  justifying  principle  of  government  in  this  our 
day  !  And  how  have  the  people  responded  wlio  have 
been  educated  in  this  school?  They  tell  the  governors 
who  represent  brute  force  that  if  such  be  their  idea  of 


A  Plea  for  CArnoLic  Edu-cation,  327 

goveTnment,  tlie  people's  idea  of  obedience  is  revolution jt, 
and  the  upsetting  of  all  authority.  And  to  this  intellec- 
tual and  spiritual  chaos  they  have  brought  the  world ; 
nations  know  not  what  their  future  may  be  ;  every  nation 
and  every  man  must  guard  his  own  by  the  brutal  strong 
arm  and  sheer  force  of  the  sword.  Is  there  anything  in 
the  issues  either  of  their  legislation,  which  has  demolished 
the  sanctity  and  fidelity  of  marriage  by  introducing  di- 
vorce ;  in  their  principles  of  government,  which  have  anni- 
hilated Justice  and  substituted  force  ;  in  their  principles 
of  morality,  which  have  gone  back  to  seek  their  justifica- 
tion in  that  which  the  Lord  Himself  declared  was  only 
permitted  on  account  of  hardness  of  heart ;  or  in  their 
speculative  theology,  that  drags  man  down  from  every 
thought  of  God  as  his  Creator,  and  makes  him  look  to  his 
ancestral  ape  ? 

Is  there  anything  in  all  this  to  command  our  respect  or 
admiration  ?  Is  there  anything  to  justify  those  impious 
men — impious  in  their  pride,  for  they  tell  the  Church  of 
Ood  they  have  no  longer  any  need  of  her  influence,  grace,  or 
sanctity — ^in  their  demand  to  be  entrusted  with  the  work 
of  education  ?  But  are  they  able  to  bring  out  the  man  in 
the  child  %  Even  if  their  principles  were  sound,  even  if 
they  were  guiltless  of  these  grave  charges  of  intellectual 
imbecility  and  degradation,  of  spiritual  and  moral  crooked- 
ness which  I  have  brought  home  to  them ;  even  if  their 
principles  were  sound,  would  they  still,  as  mere  earthly 
teachers  of  men  in  this  world,  be  able  to  bring  out  the  man 
in  the  child  \  I  answer,  Xo  !  Every  human  soul  that  is  to 
be  educated,  every  child  that  is  to  be  instructed,  has  two 
sets  of  powers  within  him,  both  of  wliich  must  be  brought 
forth  and  developed  equally.  There  are  the  intellectual 
powers — the  mind  which  can  be  taught,  which  requires  to 
be  taught,  which  is  capable  of  receiving  every  form  of  hu- 
man knowledge,  and  the  higher  forms  of  divine  knowledge. 
But  together  with  that  mind  there  is  the  heart  of  the  child, 
which  must  be  taught  how  to  love  and  whom  to  love. 
There  is  the  will  of  the  child,  the  centre  and  source  of  his 


328  A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education. 

moral  life,  the  will  upon  which  depends  whether  that  child 
will  grow  into  a  good,  virtuous,  unselfish  man,  or  a  mon- 
ster of  vi(3l>.  Now,  the  world,  in  its  training  and  education, 
does  not  even  pretend  to  deal  either  with  the  heart  or  with 
the  will  of  the  child,  only  with  its  intellect.  It  does  not 
pretend  to  form  his  heart  to  any  higher  love  than  that  of 
this  earth.  It  does  not  pretend  to  be  able  to  communicate 
to  him  one  single  restraining  influence  which  will  coerce 
his  passions,  which  will  purify  his  life.  Nay,  it  refuses 
to  open  before  him  even  the  vision  of  God  awaiting  in 
judgment  with  His  rewards  and  His  punishment  as  the 
issue  of  this  life. 

Then  what  education  can  it  give  %  It  can  make  an  in- 
tellectual monster.  For  remember,  dearly  beloved,  that 
being  is  a  monster  any  one  of  whose  parts  or  members  is 
unduly  developed  whilst  the  others  remain  without  any 
development  whatever.  That  man  is  a  monster  whose 
head  grows  to  the  full  size  of  a  man's  head  and  the  rest  of 
his  body  remains  as  an  infant,  and  that  soul  is  an  intel- 
lectual monster  which  is  crowded  with  every  species  of 
knowledge  without  a  single  accompanying  grace,  a  single 
restraining  influence  or  power  to  moralize  and  spiritualize 
life.  They  say,  to  be  sure:  "Oh!  give  him  knowledge, 
and  knowledge  will  bring  with  it  principles  that  will  make 
him  a  good  man."  I  deny  it.  I  appeal  to  history.  Who 
were  the  very  worst  men  the  history  of  the  world  tells  us 
of?  "Were  they  not  men  preeminent  for  knowledge  and 
for  intellectual  acquirements?  A  great  living  authority 
has  said,  and  said  truly:  "Quarry  the  granite  rock  with 
razors,  or  moor  the  vessel  with  thread  of  silk.  Then  may 
you  hope  with  such  delicate  instruments  of  human  know- 
ledge and  human  wisdom  to  restrain  those  great  giants, 
the  passion  and  the  pride  of  man."  That  passion  and 
pride  of  man,  the  corruption  of  his  depraved  heart,  the 
selfishness  of  his  fallen  being,  the  proneness  to  everything 
that  is  evil,  that  natural  distaste  of  every  restraint  that  is 
good — all !  these  only  can  be  touched  and  remedied  by  the 
powerful  hand  of  religion — a  hand  that  will  purify  the 


A  Plea  for  Catholic  Educattojy.  329 

young  soul  and  preserve  it  in  its  baptismal  graces,  a  hand 
that  will  stamp  upon  tlie  young  heart,  while  that  heart, 
yet  young,  is  capable  of  receiving  the  impression,  the  di- 
vine image  of  God,  who  became  man  for  love,  and  for  the 
purity  of  our  race  died  upon  a  cross.  That  hand  that  can 
build  up  a  grand  edifice  of  faith,  and  of  divine  and  highest 
knowledge,  upon  the  foundation  of  hope,  which  it  opens 
before  the  young  eye,  speaking  to  the  child  of  heaven 
almost  before  he  knows  anything  of  earth — ^upon  this 
foundation  builds  up  a  grand  edifice  of  divine  charity, 
making  the  young  man  pure  and  chaste  as  a  virgin  ;  mak- 
ing the  servant  honest  as  if  that  which  was  in  his  hands 
were  his  own,  not  his  master' s  ;  making  the  language  of 
the  young  man  pure  as  that  of  the  consecrated  priest  who 
speaks  to  God ;  making  the  reliable  friend  who  will  not 
lead  his  friend  into  misfortune  or  to  sin ;  making  the 
strong,  faithful,  chaste  husband  and  holy  wife,  who  shall 
be  the  father  and  mother  of  a  future  better  and  more  per- 
fect people.  Religion  alone  can  do  this.  Religion  enter- 
ing into  the  school  with  the  child,  the  angel  of  divine 
knowledge  unfolding  the  mysteries  while  the  angel  of 
human  knowledge  unfolds  the  things  of  earth — the  angel 
of  divine  grace  sending  the  sacramental  influences  into  that 
young  soul,  teaching  the  secret  of  divine  horror  and  hatred 
of  sin  and  of  everything  unworthy  of  man,  teaching  it  the 
divine  instinct  of  supernatural  sorrow  for  sin,  teaching  it 
humility  that  bows  down  before  God  and  before  God's 
authorities,  divine  and  human,  upon  this  earth.  Religion 
alone  can  do  this.  She  must  be  let  into  the  school  with 
the  child.  If  she  is  told  to  stand  outside  and  let  the  mere 
genius  of  human  knowledge  itself  play  upon  the  intellect, 
in  a  short  time  the  knowledge  that  was  thus  acquired  will 
be  turned  into  an  instrument  and  means  of  evil. 

And  now  tell  me,  you  fathers  and  mothers,  are  you 
prepared  to  receive  your  children  from  the  hands  of  such 
educators  and  instructors — to  receive  them  highly  gifted 
and  splendidly  endowed?  Filled  with  every  branch  of 
human  knowledge  and  every  accomplishment,  the  brightest 


330  A  Plea  for  Catuolic  Educatiox. 

and  the  most  highly  cultivated^  they  come  home  to  yon 
only  to  sneer  ut  your  ignorance,  if  you  are  not  as  learned 
as  tiiey  ;  without  a  single  element  of  reverence,  without  a 
single  element  of  obedience,  or  of  submission  to  your  word. 
Then,  as  their  character  develops  under  your  astonished 
eye.  you  find  tliat  the  young  man  is  without  purity,  that 
the  young  maiden's  modesty  is  but  a  veil  thrown  over  cor- 
ruption. You  find  that  no  principle  of  honesty  or  honor 
is  there,  when  honesty  or  honor  would  interfere  with  the 
enjoyment  of  selfishness.  You  find  that  no  principle  of 
divine  simplicity,  or  of  child-like  obedience  is  there — • 
scarcely  a  recognition  of  God's  existence  and  no  practical 
recognition  at  all  of  the  obligation  of  Grod's  law  ;  no  sacra- 
mental infiuence,  and  no  purifying  grace.  Tell  me,  if  the 
child  of  any  one  amongst  you  return  to  you  thus,  would 
not  you  say  that  you  received  a  monster  into  your  house, 
and  curse  the  day  when  you  gave  him  to  such  teachers  ? 
And  yet  such  is  all  that  this  world  can  make  of  him,  un- 
less the  world  is  prepared  to  shake  hands  with  the  Church 
of  God  on  the  great  question  of  education,  to  allow  the 
graces  of  faith,  of  purity,  and  everything  that  is  in  the 
Church'  3  liands  to  give  to  go  hand  in  hand  for  the  child 
with  every  element  of  temporal  education. 

But  our  sage  philosophers,  our  legislators,  our  fathers 
of  chaos  of  the  nineteenth  century,  our  bearded  fathers  of 
intellectual  and  spiritual  confusion,  charge  the  Catholic 
Church  that  in  her  system  of  education  she  gives  too 
much  to  God  and  too  little  to  man — that  she  tea  dies  the 
child  too  much  about  his  religion  and  not  <  nongli  about 
the  things  of  this  world.  To  the  fii-^r  ]>;nt  of  the  accusa- 
tion I  have  nothing  to  say.  We  all  know  a  man  cannot 
be  taught  too  much  concerning  God,  that  a  man  cannot  be 
made  too  religious;  but  in  making  liini  all  that  God 
created  him  to  be,  in  making  him  at'  i lo,  and  self- 

restraining  Christian,   I  ask,    does   tli-  lolic  Church 

sacrifice  one  iota  of  temporal  advantage,  or  temporal  and 
worldly  education  ?  I  appeal  to  h(>r  lii-io^-v.  ^lio  fnight 
the  world  for  nine  hundred  years  in  gicui  piut.     Where 


A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education.  331 

have  greater  or  brighter  geniuses  ever  been  seen  ?  Where 
has  the  mind  of  man  ever  been  carried  to  a  liigher  point  of 
human  culture  than  in  the  halls  and  colleges  and  universi- 
ties of  the  Catholic  Church?  Who  were  tlie  greatest  in- 
ventors? Were  they  not  her  children?  Who  was  the 
astronomer  upon  whose  learning  and  vast  knowledge 
modern  science  has  built  up  its  present  glorious  structure  ? 
He  was  a  humble  priest,  saying  Mass  at  the  altars  of  the 
Catholic  Church.  And  to-day  those  who  are  charged  by 
the  state  with  the  supervision  of  our  national  education 
liave  the  honesty  and  truthfulness  to  recall  and  to  confess 
that  the  very  best  schools  in  this  land  are  the  schools  con- 
ducted by  our  consecrated  monks  and  holy  nuns,  that  tlie 
children  in  those  schools  receive  quite  as  much  of  this 
world's  knowledge,  and  more,  than  in  the  schools  in  which 
religion  receives  only  a  secondary  place,  if  a  place  at 
all. 

Nay,  more,  that  whilst  they  are  thus  taught  everything 
this  world  demands  of  them,  they  receive  that  unknown 
power  that  reveals  itself  even  before  the  eyes  of  the  mis- 
believer in  the  purity  and  modesty  beaming  in  the  eyes  of 
the  boy  and  the  young  maiden,  in  the  gentle,  natural,  in- 
born courtesy  brought  forth  from  them  and  in  them  ;  on 
the  principle  of  divine  humility,  and  of  imitation  of  a  God 
made  humble  and  lowly  for  the  love  of  His  fellow-man. 
Therefore  the  Church  of  God,  the  Catholic  Church,  does 
not  yield  one  inch,  either  in  her  primary  or  her  suj^erior 
education — not  one  inch  does  she  yield  to  any  worldling  in 
zeal  for  human  knowledge,  in  capacity  for  imparting  it,  or 
in  the  glorious  results  her  schools  are  able  to  bring  forth  ; 
and  here  she  is  able  to  vie  with  the  world,  even  though 
that  world  condemns  her. 

And  now  it  is  for  this  great  cause  that  I  address  you  to- 
day. It  is  for  the  cause  of  education— not  of  a  grovelling, 
imperfect  education — not  of  an  education  of  this  faculty 
or  that,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  rest,  but  of  the  education 
of  the  children  of  this  town,  of  this  parish — the  education 
of  your  own  children  in  every  sense  of  the  word,  that  they 


332  A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education. 

may  liave  that  knowledge,  that  human  knowledge,  that 
human  instruction  which  will  lit  them  to  take  their  place 
in  the  ranks  of  human  society,  perhaps  to  better  them- 
selves at  home  or  in  foreign  lands,  that  they  may  bring 
with  them,  wherever  they  go,  the  inestimable  boon  of  a 
matured  and  enlightened  intelligence— that  wliich  will 
enable  them  to  vindicate  both  at  home  and  abroad  that 
attribute  of  intellectual  genius,  of  intellectual  power  which, 
thank  God !  has  ever  been  one  of  the  distinguishing  marks 
and  features  of  our  Irish  race.  For  amongst  the  human 
endowments  that  Almighty  God  gave  us  with  lavish  hand 
— perhaps  in  reward  for  and  to  counterbalance  the  many 
good  things  which  we  lost — He  showered  upon  His  own 
faithful  Irish  people  the  gift  and  principle  of  an  intel- 
ligence grand,  shrewd,  keen,  and  penetrating.  When  we 
consider  the  laws  which  made  education  penal  and  enforc- 
ed ignorance  upon  our  fathers  who  have  gone  before  us,  it 
is  plain  that  if  they  had  not  bright  intelligence,  capable  of 
drawing  great  results  from  few  causes  and  little  applica- 
tion, we,  their  children,  to-day  would  be  a  generation  of 
savages,  the  most  barbarous  upon  the  earth,  instead  of 
being  what  we  are,  able  to  hold  our  own  in  every  walk  of 
intellectual  knowledge  and  of  improvement.  I  call  upon 
you  by  your  contributions  and  your  zeal  to-day  to  give  to 
the  children  of  this  town  and  this  parish— to  give  to  your 
own  children— that  far  greater  and  higher  boon  than  that 
of  mere  human  knowledge,  that  wlierever  they  go,  at 
home  or  abroad,  they  may  illustrate  it  in  themselves  and 
spread  it  by  the  power  of  their  example  as  a  people  of 
traditional  faith,  of  traditional  puiity  of  life,  of  tradi- 
tional obedience  to  the  Church,  which  is  the  most  snrred 
inheritance  that  the  Catholic  people  of  Ireland  today 
have  received  from  our  martyred  fathers  who  went  before 
us. 

They  had  little  to  leave  us.  Tliey  lost  thcMr  all  for  God. 
But  they  left  us  a  faith  which  no  power  on  earth  could 
conquer;  they  left  us  nn  altar  which  no  power  on  earth 
could  pull  down  and  utterly  destroy  in  the  land.    AVliere  the 


A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education.  33;3 

material  altar  disappeared,  an  altar  was  built  iip  in  every 
Catholic  heart  and  in  every  Catholic  home  in  Ireland. 
They  left  us  a  faith  which  tliey  sealed  with  their  blood  and 
handed  down  as  a  most  precious  inheritance  to  their  chil- 
dren, a  faith  which  has  made  the  Irish  name  at  home  and 
abroad  symbolical  of  all  that  is  highest  and  grandest  and 
holiest  in  Catholicity.  They  left  us  purity,  which  in  our 
Irish  women  became  the  glory  and  the  splendor  of  our 
own  afflicted  land,  and  made  our  women  to  be  the  admira- 
tion of  the  whole  world  wherever  they  went.  For  wherever 
the  daughter  of  Ireland  goes,  full  of  divine  faith  and  full 
of  divine  love,  she  presents  to  the  eyes  of  an  unbelieving 
world  that  image  and  that  attribute  of  Mary  in  which  the 
tenderest  Heart  that  ever  throbbed  was  united  to  the  purest 
soul  and  body  that  ever  were  sent  upon  the  earth.  They 
left  us  the  tradition  of  our  manly  chastity  and  purity, 
which  has  preserved  this  most  ancient  race  in  a  strange 
integrity,  vitality,  and  strength  of  mind  and  body,  which 
has  enabled  us,  wherever  we  have  gone  in  our  various 
paths  of  emigration,  even  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  to 
show  signs  and  leave  traces  of  our  undying  strength  and 
energy  in  the  mighty  works  which  mark  the  exodus  of  the 
Irish  people  in  every  land. 

And  it  is  for  all  this  I  call  upon  you  to-day.  If  you 
wish  your  children  to  be  worthy  of  their  martyred  fore- 
fathers, to  be  worthy  of  their  national  traditions,  to  be 
worthy  of  that  grace  and  blessing  which  has  followed  their 
fathers  before  them  through  every  vicissitude,  sanctifying 
every  sorrow,  and  brightening  still  more  every  joy  ;  if  you 
would  make  them  to  be  worthy  of  the  Church  of  God 
which  has  always  loved  them,  as  it  loved  their  fathers  be- 
fore them,  who  devoted  themselves  to  it  as  holy  j^riests 
and  martyred  bishops ;  if  you  wish  to  preserve  all  that 
makes  Ireland  dear  to  us,  and  that  makes  us  dear  to  the 
Church  of  God,  and  through  her  to  our  Divine  Lord,  you 
must  ensure  to  the  Catholic  youth  in  this  blessed  land  of 
Ireland  a  true,  sound  Catholic,  and,  at  the  same  time, 
most  perfect  human,  education.    For  this  do  I  plead  ;  for 


334  A  Plea  for  Catholic  Education. 

the  community  that  represents  here  tliis  sacred  principle  ; 
for  the  men  who  are  contented  to  live  upon  the  barest  pit- 
tance with  which  your  charity  will  supply  them,  provided 
that  you  will  enable  them  to  continue  their  glorious  work, 
to  make  your  children  who  are  daily  received  into  their 
schools  ail  that  God,  all  that  the  Church,  all  that  their 
motherland  would  wish  them  to  be — perfect  men  and  per- 
fect Christians.  I  leave  the  cause,  I  leave  the  monks,  I 
leave  the  schools,  I  leave  the  children  now  in  your  hands  ; 
and  with  all  my  heart  and  soul  I  pray  that  God  may  send 
down  upon  you  the  angel  of  His  enlightened  mercy,  that 
you  may  be  made  zealous  for  those  little  ones  in  whom 
Christ  our  Lord  is  to  grow,  to  live,  to  suffer  perhaps,  but 
to  rise  also  into  everlasting  glory. 


The  Music  of  The  Church. 


This  sermon  was  delivered  by  Father  Burke  in  St.  Fintan's  Church,  Mount- 
rath,  Ireland,  Sunday,  July  8, 1877,  on  the  occasion  of  the  opeuing  of 
a  new  organ.  It  abounds  in  poetic  passages,  and  is  altogether  one  of 
the  most  charming  and  interesting  of  the  d.scourses  in  this  volume. 

"  Praise  ye  the  Lord  in  His  holy  places  ;  prai=o  ye  Him  in  the  firmament  of 
His  power.  Praise  ye  Him  for  His  miglily  acts  ;  praise  ye  Him  accord- 
ing to  the  multitude  of  His  greatness.  Praise  Him  with  sound  of  trum- 
pet ;  prni-e  Him  with  psaltery  and  harp.  Praise  Him  with  timbrel  and 
choir  ;  praise  Him  with  strings  and  organs.  Praise  Ilim  on  high-sound- 
ing cymbals  ;  praise  Him  on  cymbals  of  joy.  Let  every  spjrit  praise  the 
Lord." 

THESE  are  the  words  that  form  the  ISOth,  the  last  of 
-*■  the  inspired  psalms  of  David.  Dearly  beloved,  this 
duty  and  obligation  of  high-sounding  and  solemn  j)raiae  the 
Almighty  God  laid  upon  all  creation,  simply  because  He 
is  the  Creator  of  all  things ;  for  the  Holy  Ghost  tells  us 
that  all  things  unto  the  end  of  time  shall  be  resonant  of  the 
praise  of  Him  who  made  them.  Nor  can  Almighty  God  cre- 
ate, devise  for  Himself  any  other  motive,  nor  was  it  possible 
that  anything  that  was  created  should  have  been  made  for 
any  other  purpose  tlian  the  praise  of  tlie  eternal  God  ;  for 
thus  God  tells  us  that  He  made  all  things  for  Himself  and 
that  all  things  may  praise  Him.  And  what  manner  of 
praise  is  this  which  the  Almighty  God  demands  from  all 
His  creatures  ?  It  is,  my  dearly  beloved,  a  solemn,  high- 
sounding,  resonant  voice  of  praise,  a  voice  that  is  never  to 
be  silent,  a  voice  which  is  never  to  be  weary  in  the  bur- 
den of  its  perennial  thanksgiving.  And  in  the  day  that 
God  created  first  the  angels  in  heaven,  the  moment  that 

335 


336  The  Mustc  of  the  Church. 

the  first  of  those  glorious  spirits  sprang  into  existence  at 
the  commanding  and  creating  voice  of  God,  that  moment 
he  took  up  the  song  of  praise  which  is  never  to  die  nor 
fade  away  from  his  immortal  lips.  And  then  as  the  nine 
choirs  of  God's  angels  were  formed  around  Him  the  si- 
lence of  God's  awful  eternity  was  broken  by  the  glorious 
hymn  begun  in  heaven:  "Holy,  holy,  holy,  to  the  Lord 
God  of  Sabaoth ;  the  heavens  and  the  earth  are  full  of 
Thy  glory."  Thus  the  voice,  the  living  voice  of  heaven 
began  in  praise,  until  the  very  atmosphere  of  God's  upper 
heaven  resolved  itself  into  song,  so  that  the  blessed  Saint 
Hildegarde,  in  her  vision  of  heaven,  tells  us:  "I  beheld 
and  I  heard,  and  the  air  was  music."  Forth  from  the 
throne  of  God  came  the  voice  of  the  higher  angels ;  forth 
from  the  four-and-twenty  elders  harping  upon  their  harps 
of  gold  came  the  glorious  rolling  of  praise ;  forth  from 
those  high  seraphim  and  cherubim,  those  upper  spirits 
who  are  nearer  to  God,  came  the  exclamation  of  joyful 
praise  ;  forth  from  archangel  and  angel,  principalities  and 
powers,  each  in  his  own  sphere,  came  the  commanding 
note  of  praise,  and  all  heaven  seemed  as  if  it  was  one  very 
atmosphere  of  music  around  the  great  throne  of  the  eter- 
nal God.  This  is  tlie  vision  of  the  saints  when  tliey  were 
lifted  up  to  behold  how  things  are  in  the  invisible  world. 

Then,  dearly  beloved,  the  Almighty  God  created  this 
lower  and  material  creation.  After  the  lapse  of  ages,  per- 
haps, unknown  to  man,  the  visible  world  and  the  universe 
sprang  forth,  from  out  the  chaos  of  nothing  that  preceded 
it,  at  the  command  of  God.  God  stood  upon  the  virgin 
threshold  of  His  own  bright  kingdom,  and  He  looked  out 
into  the  mightiness  of  space,  into  the  eternal  darkness  of 
space  that  had  never  yet  been  illumined  by  a  ray  of  light, 
where  all  was  nothing,  and  God  said,  "Let  there  be  light " ; 
and  the  moment  these  words  came  from  His  lips  a  sun 
sprang  up  in  that  dark  void  and  beamed  forth  light  and 
illumination  unto  all  things.  Countless  thousands  and 
millions  of  glorious  stars  and  planets  sprang  out  of  nothing- 
M.         ness,  and  each,  catching  from  the  great  centre,  the  sun,  its 


The  Music  of  the  Church.  337 

own  portion  of  light,  spread  its  silvery  radiance  aronnd 
liim,  and  they  aii  began  to  move  each  in  its  own  orbit  in 
that  glorious  lirmament  the  contemplation  of  which  is  the 
highest  study  of  man.  But  the  moment  that  sun  began  to 
shine,  the  moment  the  moon  cauglit  up  her  nocturnal  light 
and  entered  into  her  office,  the  moment  the  stars  began  to 
move  in  their  orbit,  that  moment  was  heard,  according  to 
the  philosophy  of  the  ancient  world,  "  the  harmony  of  the 
spheres  "  of  God  ;  the  moment  a  celestial  voice  was  made 
resonant  through  the  movements  of  those  great  bodies  they 
moved  to  the  music  of  the  harmony  of  the  mind  of  God. 
All  the  higher  nature  took  up  its  lesson  in  praise ;  the 
heavens  began  to  tell  the  glory  of  God,  and  the  firmament 
to  proclaim  in  most  melodious  accents  the  work  of  His 
hands  and  of  Ilis  power.  Then  did  God  turn  to  the  ma- 
terial creation,  and  He  said  :  "Let  the  earth  be  made  and 
produce  every  green  thing";  and  at  the  moment  that  this 
word  came  from  the  almighty  lips  of  God,  that  moment 
this  earth,  which  was  inanis  et  vacuus,  empty  and  void, 
was  covered  with  the  beauty  of  its  verdure,  and  every  tree 
blossomed  into  the  mid-summer  of  new  life,  and  every 
fruit-bearing  tree  bowed  down  before  God,  paying  the 
homage  of  its  fulness.  Even  this  act  took  place  to  the  mu- 
sic of  God's  divine  will ;  the  very  leaves  which  burst  forth 
upon  the  newly-  created  beech  and  oak  tree  crept  into  exist- 
ence to  the  music  of  praise.  This  earth  took  up  its  portion 
and  its  song  in  the  great  choir  of  creation,  and  every 
breath  of  air — from  the  softest  murmur,  through  the  howl- 
ing of  the  midnight  storm  that  sweeps  over  the  troubled 
ocean,  to  the  rolling  of  those  awful  storms  of  the  night 
that  lift  up  the  huge  ship  and  send  her  down,  with  all  who 
are  in  her,  unto  the  depths  of  the  sea— all,  all  speak  of  God. 
It  is  the  music  of  nature,  it  is  the  rolling  voice  of  the  melo- 
dy of  a  divine  pui-pose  and  a  divine  will  which  finds  ex- 
pression in  every  element  of  God's  creation.  And  there- 
fore, when  all  this  is  praise — every  creature  in  its  own  way, 
in  its  own  sphere,  according  to  its  own  capacity,  is  praising 
the  Lord — the  things  inanimate  are  praising  Him  inani- 


838  The  Music  of  the  Church: 

mately  yet  truly  ;  the  things  that  live  praise  Him  with  liv- 
ing voice,  yet  unconsciously  ;  the  things  that  live  and  feel 
and  anderstaud  are  called  upon  to  praise  Him  with  a  higher 
voice,  the  voice  of  reason,  the  voice  of  adoration,  and  the 
glorious  melody  of  faith. 

If  the  birds  upon  the  trees  could  speak,  the  nightingale 
charming  the  dark  solitudes  of  night  would  tell  us  that  he 
was  singing  his  night  song  of  pmise  to  God.  The  lark 
takes  up  his  lauds  in  the  early  morning,  and,  shaking  the 
dew  from  his  active  wings,  soars  aloft,  gathering  his  song 
together  as  he  goes,  and  charming  the  ear  of  the  early-rising 
husbandman  as  he  watches  the  bird  rising  from  the  meadow, 
and  hears  him  gathering  his  song  together,  stronger  still, 
as  if  the  little  bird  were  conscious  he  was  coming  nearer 
to  the  throne  of  Him  who  made  him,  until  at  length,  lost 
in  the  ambition  of  his  flight,  his  form  is  no  longer  seen  in 
the  air,  but  he  who  watches  him  can  catch  a  note  or  two  of 
the  resonant  singer  that,  in  mid-air,  is  throwing  his  voice 
to  God,  until  with  wearied  wing  does  he  descend  again  to 
find  liis  nest  in  the  meadow  ;  but  even  to  the  last  moment 
he  is  scattering  around  him  the  broken  fragments  of  the 
song  that  was  so  strong.  And  thus  all  nature  is  perform- 
ing its  office,  and  with  its  highest  voice  is,  in  its  own  way, 
praising  the  Lord  God,  and  it  was  for  this  all  things  were 
made;  and  therefore  the  Scripture  says:  "O  Lord! 
Thou  hast  made  this  world,  and  all  things  are  full  of  Thy 
praise." 

If  such,  dearly  beloved,  be  the  action  of  God  in  the 
order  of  nature,  we  can  easily  imagine  how  grand  must 
the  praise  be,  how  splendid  the  song  of  thanksgiving,  that 
the  Almighty  God  expects  to  hear  from  our  hearts  and 
from  our  voices  in  the  higher  order  of  divine  grace.  Not 
satisfied  with  the  hymning  of  His  angelic  choirs,  God 
wished  to  create,  on  this  earth,  man  to  His  own  image,  to 
His  own  lilveness.  And  to  that  man  He  gave  powers  of 
mind  and  of  voice — of  mind  that  God  might  be  known,  ac- 
knowledged, and  adored  ;  and  of  voice  that  man  might 
spend  himself  in  the  days  of  his  unhappy  life  in  the  praise 


The  Music  of  the  Church.  339 

of  the  Lord  God,  his  Creator.  Behold,  then,  the  purpose 
for  which  Almighty  God  created  us,  that  we  might  know, 
that  we  might  appreciate,  His  uncreated  and  infinite  beau- 
ty ;  that  we  might  love  Him  with  all  the  power  of  love 
which  He  has  given  us  in  these  hearts  of  ours  ;  and  that 
the  mind  that  knows  Him  and  the  heart  that  loves  Him 
might  find  a  vent  and  power  of  expression  of  the  praise 
and  adoration  that  goes  forth  from  the  willing  and  loving 
lips.  Therefore  it  is  that  as  soon  as  man  was  created  Al- 
mighty God  imposed  upon  him  the  burden  of  praise. 
*'  Praise  ye  the  Lord,  O  ye  sons  of  men  ;  praise  him  in  all 
places,  praise  him  at  ail  times."  "Let  thy  mouth,"  says 
the  Holy  Ghost,  "  be  filled  at  all  times  with  the  praise  of 
thy  God."  Therefore,  my  beloved,  as  soon  as  man  was 
created  another  voice  was  added  to  the  choir  of  universal 
harmony  and  praise.  But,  oh  !  how  distinct,  how  marked 
is  this  new  note  in  the  creation  of  God.  God  in  heaven 
from  His  angels  was  getting  pure  spiritual  praise  ;  God  on 
earth  from  his  inferior  creation  was  only  receiving  the  ne- 
cessary tribute  of  unconscious  adoration  and  glory ;  but 
now  another  voice  is  added  to  this  choir—it  is  not  the  voice 
of  a  pure  spirit,  for  man  is  not  an  angel ;  it  Is  not  the  voice 
of  unconscious  adoration,  for  man  knows,  feels,  and  ap- 
preciates the  objects  which  fill  his  mouth  and  his  heart 
with  praise.  Therefore,  midway  between  the  angels  in 
heaven  and  all  material  creation  upon  earth — midway 
amongst  these  is  the  choir  of  humanity  that  takes  up  its 
glorious  song,  and  in  that  voice  of  faithful  praise  and  of 
constant  tuneful  adoration  heaven  and  earth  unite  and  are 
blended  together  in  the  harmony  of  divine  praise  and  the 
service  of  God. 

This  is  true  of  all  men  from  the  very  necessity  of  their 
being,  from  the  very  composition  of  their  nature.  This 
was  true  from  the  beginning.  But,  O  my  beloved  !  if  this 
w^as  true  of  all  times  and  of  all  classes  and  societies  of 
men,  how  much  more  true  is  it  not  of  that  living  Church 
that  Christ  our  Lord  established  upon  this  earth  to  per- 
petuate His  praise,  the  knowledge  of  His  name,  and  the 


340  The  Music  of  the  Church. 

adoration  of  His  divine,  uncreated  majesty — of  <^at  Churcli 
wiiich  He  created  tiiat  she  might  not  only  preach  His  word 
and  make  His  name  known  to  all  the  nations,  but  that  she 
might  in  her  choirs  express  every  emotion  of  love,  of  joy, 
of  ecstasy,  of  profoundest  sorrow,  every  emotion  that 
sprhigs  from  faith,  and  express  it  in  the  solemn  language 
of  song !  Hence  it  is  that  Almighty  God,  as  soon  as  He 
undertook  on  earth  to  found  a  Church,  founded  it  to  the 
note  of  music.  The  pagans  of  old,  the  philosophers  of 
Greece  and  of  Rome,  great  statesmen  of  the  ancient  times, 
whenever  a  great  temple  or  a  great  public  edifice  was 
to  be  built,  laid  the  foundation  stone,  raised  the  walls, 
and  crowned  the  edifice  with  its  last  touch  of  beauty,  but 
all,  all  to  the  accompaniment  of  sweetest  song  and  music. 
Sackbut  and  psalter  were  there,  timbrel  and  trumpet  were 
there  ;  and  so  at  the  foundation  as  at  the  dedication  of  the 
Temple  of  Jerusalem  all  was  done  to  the  harmony  of  music. 
And  when  we  behold  the  Son  of  God  laying  the  foundation 
stone  of  His  Church  on  that  tremendous  night  when  He 
ordained  His  priesthood  in  that  upper  hall  of  Jerusalem, 
when  He  gave  them  the  mystic  power  of  evocation  of  the 
Eternal  in  the  sacrifice  of  the  Mass,  when  he  gave  them 
jurisdiction  of  the  word  of  authority,  saying  to  them  : 
"  As  the  Father  sent  me,  so  do  I  send  you'' — all  this  was 
done  to  the  sound  of  music,  for  the  evangelist  expressly 
tells  us  that  whilst  all  this  was  going  on,  it  was  interrupted 
from  time  to  time  with  the  singing  of  hymns  and  it  closed 
with  music.  Et  Tiymno  dicfo—and.  having  sung  a  hymn, 
the  Lord  God  stood  up  and  went  forth  from  that  upper  hall 
of  Jernsalem  to  begin  His  passion  and  his  sorrows  in  the 
garden  of  Gethsemani,  and  that  voice  of  praise  that  He  put 
upon  the  lips  of  His  Church  was  never  to  die.  This  was 
the  word  of  God  :  "The  word  of  praise,  the  resonant  voice 
of  song  that  I  have  put  on  thy  lips,  shall  never  depart 
from  thy  lips  or  from  the  lips  of  thy  seed  after  thee,  hence- 
forth and  for  all  eternity,  says  the  Lord  God."  Hence 
what  do  we  find,  my  dearly  beloved  ?  We  find  that  the 
instinct  of  praise,  and,  indeed,  of  vocal  praise,  of   sweet, 


The  Music  of  the  Churcit.  341 

musical,  njeloclious  praise,  began  wit]i  the  very  life  of  the 
Holy  Church  of  Jesus  Christ. 

For  three  hundred  years  that  Church  of  God  was  per- 
secuted, and  she  had  to  hide  her  fair  head  in  the  cata- 
combs and  caves  of  the  earth.  The  blood  of  her  children 
was  flowing  everywhere  ;  the  cry  of  the  nations  was,  CJtris- 
tiani  ad  leones — "  Get  us  Christians,  that  we  may  cast  them 
to  the  wild  beasts,"  The  highest,  bravest,  and  the  noblest 
were  destroyed  Avherever  they  were  found,  if  only  they 
professed  the  name  and  religion  of  Christ.  Yet  in  the 
midst  of  those  very  persecutions  the  Church  night  and  day 
was  engaged  in  her  song  of  praise.  Under  the  ground  of 
that  proud  imperial  city  of  Rome,  under  its  palaces  and 
public  places,  under  its  streets  and  its  imperial  thorough- 
fares, ran  corridors  and  great,  vast  spaces  that  were  dug 
out  in  the  earth  ;  they  were  called  catacombs.  There  they 
are  to  this  day,  miles  and  miles  of  passages  underground  ; 
and  for  what  first  purposes  they  were  constructed  or  ex- 
cavated no  man  can  tell.  But  there  the  Christians  were 
accustomed  to  hide,  and  there  they  were  accustomed  to 
pay  their  devotions  to  God.  And  we  read  that  whilst  their 
pagan  persecutors  were  seeking  for  them  everywhere, 
whilst  they  were  going  on  their  mission  of  blood  through 
the  streets  of  Rome,  every  now  and  then  they  stopped 
electrified,  for  it  seemed  as  if  there  was  music  in  the  air, 
and  it  seemed  as  if  the  music  came  up  from  the  very  bow- 
els of  the  earth.  Their  pagan  ears  were  touched  ;  their 
cruel  eyes  were  melted  to  tears  ;  their  fierce,  sensual  souls 
were  shaken  and  subdued  within  them.  It  seemed  as  if 
new  gods  had  come  from  Olympus,  and  they  were  all  like 
Apollo  with  his  lyre.  Whence  came  that  music,  whence 
came  that  glorious  blending  of  voices  ?  With  the  manly 
chords  of  a  Valerian  or  a  Damasus  there  came  intermingled 
the  sweet,  heavenly  notes  of  a  Cecilia  or  an  Agnes.  These 
voices  came  from  the  catacombs.  It  was  our  Christian 
forefathers  carrying  out  in  that  darkest  day  of  persecution 
and  blood  the  mission  of  the  Holy  Church  of  God,  and 
paying  to  God  the  tribute  of  their  praise  in  the  office  of 


343  The  Music  of  the  ChuboB. 

song.  When  that  persecution  ceased  thoseffbhoirs  thafc 
had  hitherto  sung  deep  in  the  catacombs  of  Rome  came 
forth  ;  and  when  the  pagan  world  beheld  the  troops  of 
Christians  coming  forth — of  holy  confessors,  of  meek  and 
most  pure  maidens,  of  aged  men  grown  old  and  venerable 
in  the  period  of  their  sanctity,  of  little  children  reddened 
with  their  baptismal  graces — when  this  great  troop  came 
forth  from  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  and  walked  the  earth 
proclaiming  aloud  the  name  of  Christ,  then  throughout 
the  world  there  sprang  up  on  every  side  choirs  of  music — 
choirs  of  music  the  most  delicious,  the  most  melodious 
that  ever  was  heard.  Nay,  more,  it  may  be  snid,  as  far  as 
we  know  of  the  traditions  of  the  pagan  world,  that  they 
had  no  music,  and  that  their  every  science  and  art  seem  to 
have  sprung  from  the  inspiration  of  Christianity  on  the 
mind  and  voice  of  man.  Then  throughout  tlie  whole 
Christian  world,  wherever  the  Church  preached  truth  and 
converted  a  people,  her  very  first  act  was  to  establish  in 
the  midst  of  that  people  an  undying,  j)erennial  voice  of 
melodious  praise. 

The  monks  filled  the  deserts  and  made  the  desert  air 
resonant  with  the  vocal  choirs  of  God ;  the  consecrated 
virgins  in  every  city  and  every  land  were  gathered  to- 
gether in  their  cloisters,  and  the  keynote  of  that  divine, 
undying  song  of  the  Church's  praise  in  her  office,  set  to 
the  glorious  Gregorian  tones  that  came  from  out  the  heart 
of  one  of  her  greatest  popes — that  keynote  throbbed  all 
through  the  very  air.  Here,  only  four  hundred  years  after 
the  day  of  Calvary,  Patrick  came  ;  he  came  into  this  land 
of  ours,  and  he  came  not  only  to  bring  the  light  of  divine 
truth,  not  only  to  plant  the  banner  of  that  faith,  which 
banner  has  never  been  lowered  by  the  Irish  nation,  but  he 
also  came  to  establish  the  tuneful  choirs  of  praise  and 
thanksgiving  to  the  Lord.  And  among  the  various  parts 
of  Ireland  that  he  evangelized,  one  of  the  very  first  and 
one  of  the  most  famous  places  where  the  song  of  praise 
began  is  in  the  very  midst  of  you  and  in  your  diocese. 
Under  the  oaks  of  Kildare,  Bridget,  the  consecrated  vir- 


^E  Music  of  the  Church.  343 

:gin,  gathered  her  virgin  sisters  around  her ;  and  just  as 
they  lit  a  lire  the  flame  of  which  was  not  for  centuries  to 
be  permitted  to  expire,  just  as  they  lie  up  lamps  which, 
like  wise  and  pure  virgins,  they  ever  kept  replenished  and 
trimmed  and  bright  and  burning  before  their  Lord,  so  in 
like  manner  they  began  that  voice  of  praise  and  adoration, 
set  to  musical  notes  in  their  office,  which  for  many  a  year, 
ay,  for  many  a  hundred  years,  even  when  the  air  was 
filled  with  the  sounds  of  battle  and  strife,  still  spread  the 
voice  of  praise  around  the  hillsides  and  villages  of  favored 
Kildare. 

After  a  time  persecution  imposed  silence  upon  the  tune- 
ful voice  of  Ireland.  After  a  time,  and  whilst  the  choirs 
of  Ireland's  monks  and  nuns  were  still  sustaining  their 
glorious  burden  of  harmonious  praise,  there  came  the 
voice  of  a  persecutor,  and  there  came  a  hand  wielding  a 
sword,  and  there  came  a  cloud  darkened  with  blood,  and 
it  burst  over  the  nation,  and  the  voice  said  :  "Be  silent ; 
lot  the  praise  of  God  no  longer  resound  in  this  land" ;  and 
the  sword  said:  "I  will  put  an  end  to  every  voice  that 
praises  Ilim."  The  cloud  burst,  and  the  whole  land  was 
deluged  once  more  with  persecution  and  blood.  The  nuns 
were  driven  once  more  from  their  choirs  and  cloisters,  the 
holy  monks  were  driven  from  their  cells  and  churches,  the 
bishop  from  his  cathedral,  the  parish  priest  from  his 
church,  and  the  people  were  left  desolate.  A  desolation 
seemed  to  fall  upon  Ireland  which  fell  upon  Jerusalem  in 
the  sad  day  when  the  prophet  came  and  said  :  "  The  young 
man  no  longer  sings  in  the  choir,  the  aged  man  is  no  longer 
found  in  the  gate  of  the  city,  the  people  are  silent,  the 
praise  of  God  is  no  longer  heard  amongst  them."  And 
thus  for  two  hundred  years  and  more  Ireland  was  silent ; 
the  grand,  harmonious  voice  that  was  heard  in  every  land 
for  ages,  loading  wherever  glorious  melody  was  required 
for  God,  leading  every  choir  that  harped  and  sang  to  His 
praise — that  glorious  voice  was  silent,  and  "the  mother 
of  sweet  singers,"  as  well  as  of  saints  and  scliolars,  sat 
down  in  the  midst  of  her  bleeding  people,  and  there  kept 


344  The  Music  of  the  Churqb. 

silence  over  what  seemed  destined  to  be  the  grave  of  her 
faith. 

But  the  silence  was  only  that  of  the  tongue  ;  the  heart 
was  musical  as  ever  to  Grod.  The  voice  of  praise  ceased  to 
go  forth  to  the  pealing  accompaniment  of  harp  or  of  organ ; 
but  the  voice  of  praise  went  forth  from  the  silent  yet  faith- 
ful heart.  The  voice  of  i)raise  was  heard  in  the  murmur  of 
prayer  in  every  cottage  in  the  land.  Every  Irish  father  of 
a  family,  every  Irish  mother,  took  their  rosary  beads  with 
them,  and  in  the  rosary  and  prayer  in  which  its  mysteries 
and  glories  were  commemorated  by  vocal  prayer  the  faith 
of  Ireland  was  saved.  Now  the  faith  has  come  back,  and 
Almighty  God,  smiling  upon  His  people,  who  have  been  so 
long  faithful  to  Him,  seems  to  say  in  the  language  of 
Scripture :  "I  will  put  thine  ancient  song  on  thy  lips  once 
more ;  she  shall  sing  to  me  as  in  the  days  of  old ;  she  shall 
sing  to  me  as  in  the  days  when  she  came  forth  from  the 
land  of  Egypt."  And  behold  through  the  length  and 
breadth  of  this  mother-land  of  ours  choirs  are  taking  up 
the  song,  and  the  voice  of  Ireland  to-day,  in  rendering  up 
her  duty  of  praise,  is  as  fresh  and  strong  as  in  the  day 
when  the  head  minstrel  of  Tara  rose  up,  and  after  listening 
to  the  language  of  Patrick,  and  holding  up  his  hai-p  with 
the  stiings  of  gold,  cried  out:  "O  ye  chiefs!  hear  me. 
Patrick's  God  that  he  preaches  is  the  true  God ;  and  I 
vow  that  this  harp  of  mine  shall  never  vibrate  or  sound 
again  save  to  the  praise  of  Jesus  and  Mary  that  Patrick 
preaches."  And  here,  dearly  beloved,  this  fair  and  mag- 
nificent church  was  built  up,  an  eternal  monument  to  the 
undying  faith  and  to  the  imperishable  spiritual  strength  of 
this  community.  Here  this  grand  and  stately  temple, 
cathedral-like  in  its  proportions,  aspiring  in  a  spiritual 
ambition  to  pierce  the  heavens  in  the  loftiness  of  its  beauty, 
grand  in  every  conception  from  the  day  that  the  mind  of 
tJxe  Christian  architect  devised  it  until  the  day  when  a  per- 
fect and  accomplished  thing  it  rose,  a  thing  of  beauty,  upon 
this  earth,  to  make  glad  and  joyful  the  hearts  of  men  for 
ever — this  grand  church  is  a  monument  of  the  faith  that 


\  The  Music  op  tub  Church.  345 

can  never  die,  for  it  is  the  church  of  a  resurrection  ;  it  is  a 
church  that  has  sprung  out  of  a  soil  once  adorned  with  as 
fair  a  church  ;  but  the  first  things  have  passed  away,  and 
if  the  elements  of  death  were  in  them  they  never  could 
have  risen  again,  but  like  the  fabled  bird  of  old  that  sprang 
into  a  new  life  from  its  ashes,  so  out  of  a  soil  reddened 
with  the  blood  of  the  people,  out  of  a  soil  encumbered 
with  the  ruins  of  all  ancient  forms  of  beauty  that  once 
crowned  and  adorned  it,  rose  this  thing  of  beauty,  this  joy 
for  ever  to  all  men.  But  no  matter  how  fair  and  stately 
the  Catholic  church  may  be,  no  matter  how  entrancing  the 
majesty  of  strength  and  lightness  combined  in  pillar  and 
arch,  no  matter  how  refreshing  to  the  eye  the  storied  pane 
that  puts  out  to  the  light  of  Grod  the  transparent  figure  and 
form  of  Ireland's  saints,  no  matter  how  fair  the  altar,  how 
beautiful  the  service  is,  the  Catholic  church  is  still  silent 
until  the  great  organ  is  provided  for  her,  which  gives  her 
a  voice.  She  is  like  a  beautiful  woman — perfect  in  every 
feature,  entrancing  in  every  movement,  robed  in  all  the 
authority  of  a  queen,  but  not  able  to  speak — voiceless. 

She  is  like  the  fair  statue  which  the  great  sculptor  of 
old  made,  on  which  he  exyjended  his  whole  soul ;  and  when 
he  had  completed  it  and  made  it  a  thing  of  wonderful 
"beauty,  tlie  very  image  of  life,  he  then  threw  down  his 
chisel  and  burst  into  tears.  "Ah!"  said  he,  "I  have 
done  all  that  I  can,  but  I  cannot  make  my  statue  speak.'* 
But  to-day  the  beautiful  queen  has  found  her  voice,  to-day 
this  stately  spouse  of  the  Lord,  this  temple  of  the  living 
Ood,  lias  made  perfect  every  purpose  of  her  construction 
and  of  her  beauty  when  after  piling  up  splendor  upon 
splendor  around  it,  when  after  expending  her  art  in  pro- 
viding for  Him  the  golden  gates  of  His  tabernacle,  in  scat-- 
tering  around  Him  all  the  earth  has  of  fairest  and  most* 
beautiful,  in  culling  the  most  fragrant  of  her  flowers  that 
they  may  expire  yielding  their  perfumes  before  God,  in 
gathering  the  labors  of  the  mother  bee  and  the  fatness  of 
the  olive  that  these  too  might  die  in  silent  adoration  be- 
fore their  God — she  has  crowned  all  this  to-day  when  she 


346  TnE  Music  of  the  Cnmicn. 

has  provided  the  voice  of  that  great  instrument  which  will 
bear  aloft  higher  and  higlier  into  the  heavens  every  emo- 
tion of  joy,  of  sorrow,  of  adoration,  of  deliglit,  of  triumph, 
of  glory,  or  of  prostration  in  vvliich  the  Church  of  God 
will  speak  her  love  and  her  faith  to  her  Divine  Spouse. 
The  Church  has  spoken  to-day  in  the  traditional  language 
of  song  which  her  Lord  put  upon  her  lips,  in  which  she  is 
destined  unto  the  last  day  of  her  existence  to  pour  forth 
her  soul  before  Him  on  earth,  and  then,  when  the  existence 
of  time  is  over,  to  take  up  in  the  choir  of  heaven  the 
eternal  song  which  she  has  only  ceased  for  a  time  to  sing 
on  this  earth.  Have  we  not,  therefore,  reason  to  rejoice 
that  the  Almighty  God  has  blessed  Irekind  again  in  the 
preservation  of  her  ancient  faith,  in  the  strengtli  of  her  re- 
surrection, such  as  the  world  has  never  seen  ;  have  we  not 
cause  to  rejoice  that  the  sons  and  daughters  of  our  land 
have  found  their  voice  again,  that  the  young  are  in  the 
choirs  of  the  singers,  and  that  her  honored  prelates  and 
priesthood  are  at  the  gates  of  the  Sion  of  Ireland's  faith^ 
and  her  faithful  people  thronging  the  house  which  is 
called  in  the  Scripture  "the  gate  of  heaven  and  the  dwell- 
ing place  of  the  Most  High"  ?  That  joy  lias  come  upon 
lis,  my  brethren,  and  the  very  instrument  which  we  are 
offering  and  consecrating  to  God  to-diiy,  that  instrument 
which  has  pealed  forth  its  message— that  very  instrument 
has  its  own  significance  and  meaning,  and  a  deep  one  it  is. 
Mark,  of  all  the  musical  instruments,  the  organ  is  the 
queen  and  the  greatest  of  all ;  it  is  so  large  that  it  is  able 
to  embrace  a  striking  imitation  and  the  sweetest  notes  of 
all  other  instruments  together;  more  than  tiiis,  it  is  so 
foimed  in  the  conformation  and  style  of  its  build  and 
beauty  that  it  is  unfit  for  any  other  building  or  purpose 
than  those  of  the  Church  of  God.  It  is  an  instrument 
that  was  invented  in  the  Church,  by  the  children  of  the 
Church,  and  for  church  purposes,  and  its  very  notes — 
pealing,  loud,  solemn,  impressive— seem  to  b(;  incapable  of 
adaptation  to  the  ligliter  melodies  and  the  foolish  harmonies 
of  this  world.    It  is  an  instrument  that  ia  itself  is  a  strik- 


The  Mvsic  of  the  Church.  347 

inn:  fieiure  of  the  Catholic  Church  and  the  Catholic  cont^re- 
gatioii,  made  up  of  thousands  of  pipes,  from  the  greatest 
to  the  smallest,  made  up  of  so  many  stops  and  so  many- 
different  and  apparently  contradictory  component  parts, 
a  very  complicated  little  world  in  itself ;  yet,  touclied  by 
the  master  hand,  out  of  all  those  various  pipes  and  stops 
there  comes  a  rushing  of  sound  and  a  harmonious  blend- 
ing of  song  in  whicii  all  are  united,  yet  each  one  bearing 
its  own  part  in  the  harmony  that  proceeds  from  the 
whole. 

And  so  the  Catholic  Church  is  made  up  of  millions  of  men, 
each  one  different  from  the  other  and  each  having  his  own 
natural  keynote  and  sound,  his  own  opinion,  his  own  voice 
on  every  subject  under  the  sun  ;  yet  when  this  varied 
multitude  meet  togetlier  as  we  are  met  to-day,  and  when 
the  master  hand  of  divine  faith  sweeps  over  them,  forth 
from  the  manifold  elements  that  compose  the  crowd  comes 
one  voice  of  praise,  one  voice  and  one  note  of  faith,  all 
believing  the  same  thing,  all  adoring  the  same  God,  all 
expressing  the  same  faith  and  love,  each  one  adding  to 
the  strength  of  that  expression  arid  the  greatness  of  that 
melody  by  the  contribution  of  all  that  is  in  him  of  mind  to 
know  and  of  heart  to  love  the  things  relating  to  Almighty 
God. 

What  wonder,  then,  that  the  Church  should  make  so 
large  a  use  of  this  great  instrument  in  her  liturgy  and  her 
devotions  ?  The  Church  has  for  her  object  two  things  ;  for 
two  great  purposes  was  the  Church  of  God  created.  She 
was  created  for  man,  for  us — she  was  created  for  man,  for 
his  mind  and  for  his  heart ;  she  was  created  for  us,  for  our 
minds,  to  give  us  all  the  knowledge  of  God,  to  give  it  in 
its  purity,  to  give  it  in  all  its  integrity,  to  preach  it  and 
proclaim  it  in  that  wonderful  unity  of  divine  truth  and  in 
all  the  majesty  of  its  proportions.  But  she  was  also 
created  for  our  hearts  as  well  as  for  our  minds  ;  it  will  not 
do  for  us  merely  to  accept  her  message  and  make  it  our 
own  by  faith ;  we  must  go  further,  we  must  open  our 
hearts  to  her  and  let  her  move  us  and  sway  us  to  the  Lord 


S48  The  Music  of  the  ChurcS. 

our  God  by  charity.  Therefore  she  has  her  seven  sacra- 
ments, like  so  many  two-edged  swords,  creating  channels 
of  divine  grace  and  pouring  that  grace  into  our  hearts  to 
sanctify  us  and  meet  every  want  of  our  spiritual  being. 
Now,  among  the  elements  and  tlie  means  that  the  Church 
has  for  reaching  the  heart  of  man,  and  one  of  the  most 
powerful,  is  the  splendor  of  her  liturgy,  the  grandeur  of 
her  song,  and  the  resonant  accompaniment  of  her  organ 
music — for,  my  friends,  we  would  be  belying  our  nature, 
and  would  not  understand  ourselves,  if  we  did  not  admit 
how  largely  the  heart  and  the  spirit  of  man  is  swayed,  is 
touched,  is  influenced  for  good  or  evil  by  music.  When 
the  King  of  Israel  was  troubled ;  wlien  the  good  God  left 
him,  and  reprobated  him,  and  cursed  him  ;  when  the  Pro- 
phet of  God  came  and  said  :  "O  King !  thou  art  lost,  thou 
hast  despised  the  Lord,  and  now  the  Lord  God  will  take 
away  the  sceptre  from  thee,  and  His  Holy  Spirit  is  gone 
from  thee  and  will  never  come  again" — then  came  a  devil 
and  took  possession  of  the  unhappy  king,  and  filled  him 
with  the  rage  of  hell  and  every  most  unruly  passion  ;  and, 
above  all,  he  filled  his  soul  with  gloom  and  despair,  and 
the  man  laid  down  his  crown  and  sceptre  with  a  broken 
heart. 

When  these  fits  of  rage  would  come  upon  him  his  ser- 
vants came  and  told  him  to  get  some  one  to  play  upon  the 
harp,  and  David,  then  a  boy,  was  brought ;  and  when  he 
saw  that  despair  was  heavy  on  the  king,  and  the  rage  of 
hell  in  his  heart,  and  his  lips  foaming,  and  that  he  was 
trembling  in  the  convulsions  of  his  awful  despair,  then 
would  David  take  his  harp  and  with  skilful  hand  sweep 
its  strings  and  bring  forth  notes  of  tenderest  music;  and 
the  spirit  of  music  would  come  upon  the  ears  of  the  king 
and  soothe  liim,  and  those  eyes  that  were  burning  a  moment 
before  would  melt  into  unaccustomed  tears,  and  that  heart 
that  was  troubled  even  to  despair  would  begin  to  think 
that  there  was  some  hope  yet  in  a  God  from  whom  there 
came  sweet  harmony.  He  had  lost  h(^aven,  but  the  very 
echo  and  vision  of  heaven  seemed  to  com©  to  him  again  aa 


The  Music  of  the  Church.  349 

the  young  man  played  upon  liis  harp,  and  so  he  found 
peace  and  calm,  second  only,  but  infinitely  second,  to  the 
peace  and  calm  which  he  had  lost.  And  many  a  troubled 
spirit  will  come  into  this  church  now  and  at  future  times 
— many  a  poor  man  oppressed  with  poverty,  many  an  in- 
firm one  troubled  with  disease  and  pain  ;  many  a  worldly- 
minded  man  disturbed  in  his  visions  of  earthly  prosperity 
and  preferment  ;  many  a  young  heart  yielding,  or  on  the 
point  of  yielding,  to  the  blandishments  of  a  fatal  world  ; 
and  they  will  come  in  here  to  pray,  and  wiiilst  kneeling 
before  this  altar  of  God,  oh  !  as  if  touched  by  an  angel's 
hand,  the  air  around  them,  the  very  air  they  breathe,  will 
begin  to  tremble  to  successive  waves  of  melody,  and  it  will 
seem  to  them  as  if  God  Himself  was  speaking  in  the  mag- 
nificent song  which  is  His  own,  and  the  troubled  spirit  will 
be  calmed,  and  the  down-hearted  will  be  cheered,  and 
those  who  are  suifering  will  be  comforted  for  a  time,  and 
the  worldly-minded  will  be  reminded  of  heaven,  and  the 
crafty,  cunning  man  will  begin  to  get  a  glimpse  of  the 
higher  world  ;  and  the  organ  will  bring  all  together,  with 
heart  open  to  the  voice  of  prayer,  and  that  prayer  will  go 
up  to  heaven  on  the  notes  of  the  organ.  Rejoice,  there- 
fore, that  you  have  found  your  voice  to-day  ;  rejoice  that 
the  zeal  of  your  holy  and  devoted  pastor  is  crowned  to-day 
with  the  last  embellishment  of  his  glorious  church  and 
the  fulfilment  of  his  hopes  ;  rejoice  that  the  Church  has 
found  in  its  new  voice  another  guarantee  that  it  will  be 
handed  down  from  age  to  age,  and  generation  to  genera- 
tion, among  a  x^eople  the  most  melodious  and  gifted  in  the 
world.  Oh  !  let  us  rejoice  that  Ireland  to-day  can  praise 
her  Lord  with  all  the  solemnity  of  her  praise,  and  that  she 
can  give  Him  thanks  according  to  the  vastness  of  His 
graces  and  the  multitude  of  His  mercies. 


God  our  Father. 


This  discourse  is  one  of  the  Christmas  novena  sermons  delivered  by  Father 
Burku  in  Ibe  Dominicaa  Cburch,  Dublin,  1876.  It  is  an  eloquent  and 
forcible  argument  on  tbe  mercy  of  God.  It  "will  be  read  with  celigbt 
by  the  sinner  who  has  strayed  from  his  Father's  house,  and  who, 
•wearied  of  the  ingratitude  of  the  world,  seeks  the  consolations  of  re- 
pentance. It  is  also  a  masterpiece  of  theological  acumen,  and  worthy  of 
study  and  meditation. 

*'  Brethren,  we  have  no  longer  received  the  spirit  of  bondage  unto  fear,  but 
the  spirii  of  adoption  of  sons,  as  of  children,  crying  Abba,  father." 

npHESE  words,  my  dearly  beloved,  are  to  be  fonnd  in 
-■-  the  writings  of  St.  Paul  the  apostle.  TVe  have  already 
been  engaged  in  the  contemplation  of  the  attributes  of  God. 
We  have  considered  the  mercy  of  God,  and  have  consid- 
ered the  truthfulness  or  the  reality  of  God  as  manifested  to 
■us  in  the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation.  But  in  our  consider- 
ation of  these  attributes,  my  dearly  beloved,  we  looked 
entirely  to  God,  scarcely  at  all  to  ourselves.  It  is  neces- 
sary now  that  I  should  invite  your  attention  to  another 
grace  or  blessing  that  comes  to  all  men  througli  the  mys- 
tery of  tlie  Incarnation,  and  in  the  contemplation  of  that 
grace  or  blessing  we  have  to  look  unto  ourselves  rather 
than  to  contemplate  Almighty  God.  That  grace  and  bless- 
ing to  which  I  call  your  attention  is  the  grace  of  adoption, 
whereby  we  are  made  to  be,  through  the  Incarnation,  the 
children  and  the  sons  of  God.  Reflect,  dearly  beloved,  if 
you  please,  upon  this.  By  the  creation  we  were  made  the 
creatures  of  God.  He  has  over  us  the  same  absolute 
dominion  that  He  has  over  all  the  other  animals  that  Jle 

8S0 


God  our  Father.  351 

hn  s  created.  By  His  continued  preservation  and  providen- 
tial government  we  are  become  the  subjects  of  God.  His 
government,  His  laws,  His  guidance  are  made  apparent  in 
every  action  of  our  lives  if  we  only  submit  to  His  com- 
mands. But  neither  the  creature  nor  the  subject  can  pos- 
sess the  dignity  or  the  glory  of  the  Son.  Oh !  how  different, 
my  brethren,  is  the  position  of  the  child  in  his  father's 
house  from  that  of  the  sei-vant  by  whom  he  is  attended ; 
of  the  eldest  son,  the  heir  apparent  of  the  crown,  from 
that  of  the  lowly  subject  who  lives  in  subjection  to  the 
monarch's  government  and  law.  One  enters  freely  and 
fully  into  the  domestic  life  of  the  sovereign,  breathes  only 
the  atmosphere  of  love.  Tlie  other  lives  in  the  complete 
subjection  of  a  subject  to  his  ruler,  obliged  to  perform 
every  duty,  to  fulfil  every  obligation  that  his  lord  imposes. 
Now,  such  is  the  love  of  God  for  man  that,  not  content 
that  m:in  should  be  His  creature  by  creation,  His  subject 
by  divine  preservation,  government,  and  guidance,  God  in 
His  infinite  love  determined  to  raise  u]y  this  rational  being 
to  the  privileges,  joys,  and  glories  of  his  own  Sonship.  I 
am  not  satisfied,  the  Lord  seems  to  say,  that  this  work  of 
mine  sliould  be  merely  my  creature  ;  tliat  this  servant  of 
mine  should  exist  as  a  mere  subject  of  my  rule.  No !  I 
will  raise  hiiu  to  something  liigher,  more  noble,  more  glori- 
ous than  this.  I  will  make  him  my  son.  For  this  purpose 
it  was  necessary  that  the  real  eternal  though  consubstan- 
tial  Son  of  God  should  come  down  from  heaven  to  earth  ; 
that  He  should  become  incarnate  by  the  operation  of  the 
Holy  Gliost  in  the  womb  of  the  pure  Virgin  Mary. 

Christ,  by  becoming  the  child  of  an  earthly  mother,  as 
really  and  as  truly  as  He  is  the  child  of  His  eternal  Father  ; 
by  His  living  on  the  earth  as  a  man  still  retained  every 
perf(^ction  of  His  divinity — the  sanctity,  the  purity,  the 
power  of  God.  Thus  was  the  mystery  accomplished,  not 
leaving  in  heaven  one  single  attribute  that  belonged  to  His 
divinity  ;  infinite  in  His  own  perfections,  beloved  by  His 
heavenly  Father  with  an  infinite  love,  taking  to  Himself  a 
human  body  from  the  womb  of  Mary,  taking  to  Himself  a 


352  God  our  Father.  ' 

human  soul  from  the  inspiration  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  as- 
suming both  unto  His  divine  personality,  absorbmg  both 
in  God.  From  tliat  union  of  a  human  body  and  a  human 
soul  God  came  forth — Jesus  Christ,  the  man-God,  undi- 
vided and  indivisible.  The  moment  that  this  great  mystery 
was  accomplished  in  Mary's  womb,  the  moment  the  eartli 
beheld  the  union  of  Mary's  Child  with  God,  that  moment 
all  the  relations  between  man  and  God  were  clianged. 
Man  no  longer  remained  merely  the  creature  of  the  Cre- 
ator, tiie  subject  of  the  Ruler,  the  servant  of  the  Master. 
For  Mary's  Child  was  the  Son  of  God,  the  figure  of  His 
substance,  the  splendor  of  His  glory.  God  lives  and 
moves  in  Him.  If  He  suffers  pain,  it  is  God  that  suffers  ; 
if  He  experiences  sorrow,  it  is  God  that  grieves.  If  those 
eyes  are  melted  into  tears  of  sympathy  with  man's  suffer- 
ings, or  by  expiation  of  man's  sins,  it  is  God  that  weeps, 
they  are  the  tears  of  God.  When  Mary's  Son  lays  bare 
His  back  to  the  stripes  of  the  scourger,  it  is  the  Son  of  God 
that  is  scourged.  When  on  His  sacred  head  they  plant  and 
press  down  the  wreath  of  thorns,  it  is  on  the  brow  of  the 
Son  of  God  that  they  set  this  crown  of  agony  and  derision ; 
and  when  the  hammer  of  the  executioner  drives  the  nails 
through  His  sacred  hands,  when  He  bleeds  and  faints,  and 
dies  on  Calvary,  it  is  the  Son  of  God  that  suffers  that 
agonizing  death. 

In  all  that  relates  to  His  eternal  Father,  in  all  the  pri- 
vileges and  power  and  glory  that  relate  to  Him,  He  is  the 
Son  of  God,  the  eternal  Son  of  God,  the  all-high,  the  all- 
holy,  the  all-adorable  Son  of  God,  and  yet  He  is  tiue  man. 
He  is  the  son  of  the  virgin  woman,  Mary.  When  she 
sought  Him  for  three  days  in  Jerusalem,  when  He  was 
about  twelve  years  old,  it  was  the  anxious  search  of  a 
mother  seeking  for  her  child.  It  was  a  mother  that  at 
length  found  Him  in  the  temple ;  it  was  a  mother  that 
took  home  with  her  her  son.  On  that  terrible  morning  of 
Good  Fiiday,  when,  in  the  intensity  of  her  sorrow,  to  her 
tender  eyes  was  denie^d  the  relief  and  privilege  of  tears,  it 
was  a  mother  that  followed  her  son  to  the  place  of  execu- 


OoD  OUR  Father,  353 

tion  and  saw  Him  die,  and  that  son  was  still  truly,  really 
God.  The  lirst  and  greatest  privilege  of  this  assumption 
by  Jesus  Christ  of  man's  nature  into  His  own  is  that  it 
makes  man  by  adoption  wliat  Christ  was  by  nature ;  it 
makes  man  by  direct  grace  what  Christ  was  by  essential 
glory — the  Son  of  God.  We  are  all  entered  into  tiie  son- 
ship  of  God  by  the  incarnation  of  the  Eternal  Word.  We 
are  no  longer  only  the  servants  of  the  Master,  the  slaves 
of  the  Lord.  We  are  now  the  children  of  the  Father, 
living  in  the  Fathers  house,  entertained  at  the  Father's 
table,  admitted  to  all  the  great  inheritance  that  the  Father 
can  bestow,  the  infinite  legacy  of  His  love — enjoying,  in 
fine,  all  the  affection  and  the  privileges  that  a  true  child 
can  claim  from  the  father  that  begot  him. 

For  four  thousand  years  man  has  been  the  servant  of  a 
divine  Master,  the  subject  of  a  divine  Ruler,  but  there 
was  nothing  divine  in  man.  He  lived  in  bondage  under 
the  law  of  fear.  When  God  spoke  to  him  it  was  as  a 
ruler  to  his  subject,  an  awful  master  to  his  lowly  slave. 
The  Scripture  tells  us  how  the  clouds  of  heaven  veiled 
His  face,  how  the  thunder  shook  the  hills,  and  the  light- 
ning flashed  across  the  plains  when  God  stood  on  Mount 
Sinai,  and  the  people  of  His  choice  lay  prostrate  and 
trembling  in  the  valley  below.  And  when,  in  all  His  terri- 
ble splendor,  God  flashed  before  the  eyes  of  His  prophet, 
that  prophet  exclaimed  aloud:  "Woe  is  me,  for  I  have 
seen  the  face  of  the  Lord."  Oh  !  how  different  was  the 
coming  of  the  Lord  which  we  are  now  preparing  to  com- 
memorate !  He  sent  no  thunder  and  lightning  before 
His  face ;  His  coming  was  soft,  silent,  and  gentle  as  the 
dew  to  the  parched  earth.  "  Send  forth  your  dew,  0  ye 
heavens!"  says  the  Scripture,  "and  ye  clouds  rain  down 
the  justice  of  God."  There  is  no  anger  in  His  face  to-day  ; 
it  is  all  mercy,  meekness,  and  love.  "Behold,  Jerusalem  !" 
eaith  the  Scripture  ;  "the  King  shall  come  to  thee,  clothed 
in  magnificence  and  gentleness.  His  voice  shall  not  be' 
heard  aloud  ;  His  spirit  is  sweet  beyond  compare."  "I  will 
not,"  He  Himself  tells  us,  "bruise  the  broken  reed,  and  the 


35i  God  ouB  Father. 

smoking  flax  I  will  not  extinguisli."  Oh  !  there  is  indeed 
a  change  in  the  relations  between  God  and  man,  iu  the 
coming  of  God  on  Mount  Sinai,  and  the  coming  ol  Jesus 
Chmt  to  Bethlehem.  Almost  in  His  first  lesson  to  the 
world,  in  His  first  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  He  taught  His 
brethren  in  the  fiesh  that  their  relations  with  God  were 
changed.  He  told  tliem  that  they  were  no  longer  to  pray 
as  servants  to  a  Lord  of  whom  a  prophet  said:  "  O  Lordl 
thou  art  a  God  of  fear,  a  terrible  God,  and  who  shall  with- 
stand Thee?"  But  thus.  He  says  to  ^them,  shall  you 
pray :  "Our  Father  who  art  in  heaven."  We  all  enter  in 
virtue  of  this  humanizing  of  God,  in  virtue  of  this  assump- 
tion of  our  fallen  nature,  into  the  infinite  sanctity  of  the 
divine  person  of  Christ ;  we  all  enter  into  the  privilege  of 
the  sonship  of  God  ;  we  all  bask  in  the  sunshine  of  His 
divine  paternity.  The  baptized  man  is  for  ever  the  son  of 
God.  He  may  sin  ;  he  may  be  covered  with  offences  ;  he 
maybe  the  worst  sinner  that  this  earth  contains  ;  God  may 
deprive  him  of  His  grace  ;  he  may  forget  the  kingdom  of 
God  ;  but  there  is  one  thing  he  can  never  lose,  in  heaven, 
on  earth— aye,  in  the  lowest  depths  of  hell — and  that  is 
the  sonship  of  God.  Once  God's  sons  we  are  His  sons  for 
ever  ;  His  sons  not  merely  that  He  has  created  us  and  that 
we  are  thus  the  offspring  of  His  omnipotent  power,  but 
possessed  of  that  substantial  sonship  that  comes  out  of  the 
adoption  of  God's  infinite  love,  that  raises  man  in  the  di- 
vine person  of  Jesus  Christ  to  be  the  real  true  child  of  his 
Heavenly  Father.  Let  this  simple  truth,  my  brethren, 
sink  deep  into  your  hearts. 

We  are  preparing  next  morning  to  meet  onr  newly-bom 
Saviour,  our  divine  and  eternal  Brother,  than  whom  heaven 
could  produce  nothing  greater,  whose  like  earth  has  never 
bf^held  before,  for  he  is  both  God  and  man.  Oh  !  my 
brethren,  liow  shall  you  greet  Him  ?  In  what  words  will 
you  address  Him  ?  In  what  character  approach  Him  ?  I 
answer :  We  shall  come  not  merely  as  creatures  to  the 
throne  of  their  Creator,  as  servants  to  the  foot  of  their 
Lord  ;  we  will  approach  Him  as  Jacob  approached  Esau — 


OoD  OUR  Father.  355 

when  fie  came  to  him  in  the  fulness  of  his  love  after  a  part- 
ing of  many  months— when  he  tiung  his  arms  round  his 
neck,  and  pressed  him  to  his  breast  and  said  :  "  My  bro- 
ther." He  is  our  brother— our  eldest  brother,  begotten  in 
the  Father  from  all  eternity,  begotten  in  Mary's  womb  on 
Christmas  day  upon  earth.  The  apostle  speaks  of  Him  as 
the  first-born  amongst  many  brothers.  We  are  the  bro- 
thers of  Christ,  who  is  the  Son  of  God  ;  we  are  the  sons  of 
God,  who  is  the  Father  of  Christ  our  brother.  Christ  is 
our  true  brother ;  He  has  admitted  us  to  brotherhood  on 
the  terms  of  the  perfect  equality  of  our  common  nature. 
The  inheritance  which  He  has  in  heaven  and  through  His 
humanity  comes  to  us  upon  the  earth.  Oh  !  exclaims  the 
inspired  writer  in  accents  of  exaltation,  we  are  become  the 
heirs  of  God  and  the  heirs  of  Jesus  Christ,  who  is  the  Son 
of  God.  And  now,  dearly  beloved  brethren,  I  might  dwell 
upon  this  glorious  subject,  and  indeed  if  I  were  to  yield  to 
the  wishes  of  my  heart  and  give  vent  to  the  thoughts  of 
my  mind,  I  would  behold  this  mystery  of  divine  adoption 
in  the  higher  aspects  it  presents,  the  higher  privileges  it 
confers,  in  the  free  intercommunion  of  prayer  and  bless- 
ing which  it  admits  between  ourselves  and  God.  But 
I  will  dwell  on  one  special  grace  that  is  conferred  upon  us 
by  this  divine  adoption.  Now,  I  take  it  for  granted  that 
you  are  all  preparing  for  a  good  confession,  preparing  with 
pure  hearts  to  meet  your  Saviour  on  Christmas  day,  and 
therefore  I  will  fasten  on  this  one  point,  this  one  great 
grace  and  blessing  conferred  by  God's  adoption— the  per- 
fect ease  and  facility  with  which  we  can,  if  we  choose,  turn 
from  onr  sins  and  be  reconciled  to  God.  The  truth  is  em- 
bodied in  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  that  wonderful 
parable  which  we  are  fond  of  contemplating,  but  into  the 
deep  hidden  meaning  of  which  perhaps  we  do  not  enter. 
A  certain  man  had  two  sons  ;  he  was  a  rich  man,  perhaps 
a  great  lord  in  his  own  country.  The  elder  son  remained 
always  faithful  to  his  father,  but  the  younger,  coming  to 
him,  said  :  "Give  me  my  inheritance,  give  me  whatever  is 
coming  to  me,  and  let  me  go."     And  when  he  had  received 


356  God  OUR  Father. 

Ms  portion  lie  turned  his  back  upon  his  father  and  his 
father's  house  and  went  forth  into  a  foreign  country,  and 
fell  among  evil  associates,  and  squandered  his  inheritance 
in  debaucheiy,  licentiousness,  and  gross  sin,  and  he  fell 
into  abject  misery,  and  his  associates  abandoned  him  and 
he  became  a  feeder  of  swine,  and  even  with  the  husks  on 
which  the  swine  were  fed  he  endeavored  to  satisfy  his  hun- 
ger ;  but  he  could  not  do  it,  says  the  Scripture,  and  then 
he  reflected  within  himself,  and  he  said :  '*  Well,  failen  as 
I  am,  ragged  and  naked  as  I  am,  starved  and  degraded  as 
I  am,  abandoned  by  all  my  friends,  those  friends  that  w^ere 
so  loud  in  their  professions  in  the  days  of  my  prosperity, 
I  am  still  my  father's  son.  I  have  no  resource,  no  hope 
left  but  this  :  I  will  arise  and  go  to  my  father,  and  per- 
chance he  will  take  compassion  on  my  misery."  And  he 
arose  and  went  to  his  father,  and  while  he  was  still  a  great 
way  off  he  was  filled  with  reproaches  and  api)rehensions, 
fearful  in  his  heart,  and  covered  with  confusion  and  shame, 
and  he  thought  he  would  say  to  his  father,  "  Take  nie  as  a 
servant  and  no  longer  as  a  son."  At  the  door  of  the  house 
was  the  old  man,  the  father,  and  from  a  long  way  off  he 
saw  the  son  approach  the  house,  and  his  eyes  were  blinded 
with  tears  of  joy  at  his  approach,  and  he  rushed  from  the 
door  and  met  him  half  way,  and  put  out  his  arms  like  a 
blind  man,  blinded  with  his  tears,  feeling  for  his  son,  and 
he  took  him  to  his  heart  and  embraced  him,  and  said  to 
him  no  words  but  these  :  *'  My  son,  my  son  !"  And  he 
ordered  that  the  fatted  calf  should  be  killed,  and  that 
there  should  be  rejoicing  in  the  house  because  the  son 
had  returned.  Oh !  how  wonderful  the  affection  of  the 
offended  father,  how  strange  the  confidence  of  the  fallen 
child.  If  he  had  been  a  mere  servant  who  had  deserted 
liis  master,  a  vile  slave  who  had  run  away  from  his  owner, 
he  would  never  have  dared  thus  to  return.  He  would 
have  known  that  he  would  have  been  hunted  with  igno- 
miny from  the  door.  But  he  was  the  son,  and  he  returned 
and  he  was  received  with  all  the  father's  tenderness  and 
love. 


^  God  our  Father,  357 

JVe  are  the  sons  of  God  in  virtue  of  that  adoption  by 
which  He  makes  us  His  children  in  baptism.  We  are  the 
wild  olives  of  Adam' s  growth,  but  we  are  engrafted  on  the 
sweet,  the  true,  the  faithful,  the  heavenly  olive  of  Jesus 
Christ.  By  baptism  we  have  received  the  radix,  the  root 
of  eternal  salvation  whereby  we  may  hope  to  be  saved. 
The  root  is  the  essential  to  the  life  of  the  tree.  No  matter 
how  stunted  its  growth,  how  poor  its  branches,  how 
withered  its  blossoms,  how  bitter  its  fruit,  while  the  root 
remains  there  is  still  hope.  So  it  was  with  the  tree  in  the 
Gospel,  with  the  fig-tree  that  bore  no  fruit.  The  master  said : 
"Let  it  be  cut  down,  for  it  is  barren."  And  the  skilled 
gardener  said,  to  the  master  :  "  Lord,  not  so  ;  but  let  me 
dig  round  the  root  and  tend  and  water  it,  and  perchance  ifc 
may  yet  bear  fruit."  And  the  Lord  suffered  him  to  do 
what  he  desired  with  the  tree,  for  its  root  was  still  there, 
and  while  the  root  remained  there  was  hope  of  its  produc- 
tiveness, otherwise  it  would  have  been  cut  down  at  once, 
for  it  cumbered  the  soil.  Sons  of  God  we  are  by  baptism ; 
no  matter  how  we  may  abuse  the  grace  of  adoption,  still 
God  regards  us  as  His  children,  and  as  the  brothers  of 
Christ,  His  eldest  and  eternal  Son.  We  may,  indeed,  as 
perhaps  some  among  us  have  often  done,  as  men  are  doing 
every  day,  we  may  go  to  our  eternal  Father  and  say : 
"Give  me  my  inheritance  ;  give  me  what  belongs  to  me  as 
the  portion  of  a  child." 

And  God  gives  us  the  rich  inheritance  of  a  cultivated 
and  enlightened  reason  capable  of  knowing  Him,  of  a  pure 
soul  capable  of  loving  Him,  of  a  free  will  capable  of  exe- 
cuting His  commands.  And  we  may  take  those  gifts  like 
the  prodigal,  and  turn  our  back  upon  our  father  and  our 
father's  house.  We  may  go  forth  into  the  wide,  desolate 
country  of  sin  and  cast  our  lot  among  the  sinners  upon  this 
earth  ;  we  may  debase  our  intellect,  pollute  our  souls,  en- 
slave our  wills,  till  we  have  nothing  left  of  all  the  rich  in- 
heritance which  we  have  received,  and  have  become  poor, 
degraded,  and  deserted  upon  the  earth.  Then  the  false 
friends  that  took  us  by  the  hand  in  the  days  of  our  incipi- 


358  OoD  OUR  Father.  -f 

ent  impurity  will  turn  us  from  their  doors  and  commq|id  us 
to  be  gone.  The  clothing  of  our  souls,  of  baptismal  purity 
and  innocence,  is  defiled  and  torn  in  shreds,  we  are  naked 
and  despoiled,  we  grovel  amongst  the  swine  of  our  own 
debased  passions  and  filthy  inclinations  ;  we  seek  in  vain 
with  the  base  food  of  sensual  gratifications  to  satisfy  the 
cravings  of  a  hungry  soul,  that  disappointed  spirit  that 
was  created  for  God,  and  that  can  never  be  satisfied  with 
all  that  this  earth  can  afford  of  sensuality  or  sin.  Then 
nothing  remains  but  for  us  to  do  what  the  prodigal  did, 
to  remember  that  we  are  the  sons  of  God,  and  to  arise  and 
return  to  the  house  of  our  father.  Oh !  sweet  and  con- 
soling thought.  I  may  be  scarcely  able  to  recognize  my- 
self in  this  changed  and  fallen  condition  ;  but  our  Divine 
Father  in  heaven  knows  us.  Upon  the  soul,  so  degraded 
and  despoiled.  He  sees  the  sacred  stamp  that  has  been  im- 
pressed upon  it  by  baptism — the  image  of  the  Divine  Son, 
who  has  a  nature  common  with  ourselves.  Let  me  but  re- 
member, fallen  and  degraded  as  I  am,  I  am  still  the  son  of 
.God  and  brother  of  Christ.  Behold,  then,  how  easy  it  is 
to  return  to  God.  I  may  be  full  of  sins,  but  I  need  have 
no  fear  for  my  reception.  It  is  not  the  subject  returning 
to  allegiance  to  his  ruler,  it  is  not  the  servant  returning  to 
his  lord  ;  it  is  going  back  to  a  father  and  to  a  father's 
house.  In  olden  times  by  what  awful  suffering  had  men, 
aye,  even  the  man  who  was  called  after  God's  own  heart, 
to  do  penance  for  their  sins  and  to  win  back  the  pardon 
and  the  friendship  of  God.  David,  the  king,  has  left  us  in 
the  Scriptures  the  inspired  record  of  his  penitential  suf- 
fering. "I  have  watered,"  he  said,  "my  couch  with  my 
tears  ;  I  humbled  my  soul,  and  broke  it  with  fasting  ;  my 
tears  were  my  drink  night  and  day."  And  great  as  was 
his  sorrow  his  pardon  was  not  without  conditions.  God 
gave  him  his  choice  of  war,  of  famine  or  pestilence.  By 
suffering  and  humiliation  was  the  prophet  king  obliged  to 
expiate  his  sins.  Still  he  was  not  sure  that  his  expiation 
was  accepted,  that  his  pardon  was  granted.  "  Wlio,"  he 
Bays,   "vsdll  give  water  to  my  head  and  a  fountain  of 


*  God  OUR  Father.  359 

tears  to  my  eyes,  that  I  may  weep  my  sins  night  and 

day  ?" 

But  in  that  we  have  received  the  spirit  of  the  adoption 
of  the  sons  of  God,  in  that  we  live  under  the  love  of  Him 
rather  than  that  of  fear,  all  that  we  have  to  do  is  to  rise  up 
with  the  prodigal  in  the  Gospel,  and  say  :  "I  will  go  back 
to  my  father  and  to  my  father's  house,  and  my  father  will 
receive  me  as  a  son.  He  will  not  demand  from  me  the 
labors  of  a  life— of  a  life  of  sorrow.  He  will  only  ask  one 
sigh  of  contrition— the  tribute  of  a  single  tear."  The  first 
tears  that  Magdalen  shed,  when  she  fell  weeping  at  the 
feet  of  Jesus,  blotted  away  all  her  sins,  for  the  weeping 
woman  was  the  sister  in  Christ,  and  the  daughter  of  God. 
The  perfect  ease  with  which  we  can  go  back  to  God  after 
we  have  left  Him  arises  from  the  fact  that  we  are  His  sons. 
The  son  may  be  ungrateful  to  the  father,  the  father  may 
be  offended  with  the  son  ;  but  the  moment  he  shows  signs 
of  sorrow,  the  moment  he  shows  the  wish  to  be  restored 
to  his  father's  love,  that  moment  he  is  forgiven.  The 
father's  love,  the  father's  heart,  is  moved  within  him  at 
the  sorrow  of  his  son,  the  blood  of  his  blood,  the  bone  of 
his  bone,  and  the  flesh  of  his  flesh,  the  offspring  of  his 
loins.  Never,  or  scarcely  ever,  do  we  find  in  revealed  or 
profane  history,  in  any  age  or  any  climate  of  the  globe,  a 
father  deaf  to  that  loud  cry  of  the  nature  that  is  within 
him.  No ;  when  we  turn  to  our  Father,  though  our  sins 
are  numberless  as  the  sands  upon  the  seashore,  they  shall 
be  wiped  away — though  they  be  as  red  as  scarlet,  they 
shall  be  made  white  as  snow.  Our  atonement  is  in  the 
blood  of  Christ.  There  is  this  common  link  between  our- 
selves and  our  God.  It  belongs  to  the  Father,  because  it 
is  the  blood  of  His  Own  Divine  Son — it  belongs  to  us  be- 
cause it  is  the  blood  of  the  Child  of  Mary,  true  man,  true 
brother  of  our  nature.  His  heart  was  broken.  His  blood  was 
shed  for  sin  he  never  had  committed,  that  through  His  in- 
finite repentance  the  way  of  reconciliation  with  God  might 
become  easy  to  ns.  His  brothers.  Now,  are  we  going  to 
refuse  the  inestimable  privilege  which  He  has  so  dearly 


360  OoD  OUR  Father. 

purchased  for  us  ?  Is  there  one  in  this  church  that  will 
Bay  at  this  Christmas  time  that  is  approaching,  "It  is 
many  weeks,  it  is  many  months,  since  I  was  at  confession 
or  communion.  Without  any  strict  examination  of  my 
conscience  I  can  accuse  myself  of  sin,  of  grievous  sin  of 
mortal  sin.  I  know  that  I  am  an  exile  from  my  father's 
house,  I  know  that  I  am  an  enemy  to  God.  But  I  will  not 
return  ;  I  will  try,  though  I  must  try  in  vain,  to  satisfy  the 
craving  of  my  hungry  soul  with  a  surfeit  of  the  gross  sen- 
suality which  the  beasts  themselves  use  only  in  modera- 
tion. My  God  Himself  comes  down  from  Heaven  to  offer 
Himself  to  me  in  the  high  banquet  of  His  eternal  love.  I 
will  not  accept  His  invitation ;  I  will  not  return  to  my 
Father's  house  ;  I  will  not  sit  down  at  my  Father's  table  ; 
I  will  make  my  Christmas  feast  of  the  husks  of  swine." 
Is  there  one  amongst  you  that  will  pursue  this  course  of 
shame  and  sorrow  ?  Oh,  no  !  No  ;  you  will  prepare  this 
blessed  Christmas  time  to  enter  upon  the  road  of  repen- 
tance, of  return  to  God  ;  that  return  that  is  so  short  and  so 
easy,  because  it  is  the  return  of  sons  to  their  Father's 
house.  The  way  from  God  was  long  and  toilsome ;  the 
way  to  God  is  short  and  easy.  Scarcely  have  we  turned 
our  faces  toward  home  when  we  find  our  Father  coming 
forth  to  meet  us  half-way  upon  our  road,  and  take  us  to 
His  bosom  as  the  father  took  his  repentant  son  in  the 
Gospel.  He  will  take  us  to  His  embraces  in  the  Holy 
Sacrament  of  the  Confessional.  The  moment  God  thus 
clasps  us  in  the  arms  of  His  mercy,  that  moment  we  are 
completely  reconciled  to  our  Heavenly  Father,  that  mo- 
ment we  regain  the  divine  character  of  the  sons  of  God, 
pure  as  the  angels  that  never  sinned  and  never  can  sin  be- 
fore the  Lord,  dear  to  our  Father,  aye,  almost  as  our  eldest 
brother,  Christ,  whom  He  sent  down  from  Heaven  for  our 
redemption.  God  will  sound  the  keynote  of  the  glorious 
melody  of  reconciliation  and  of  love  in  Heaven.  He  will 
say  to  the  nine  shining  choirs  of  his  angels:  "Rejoice 
with  ^fe,  My  angels,  for  My  son  was  lost  and  he  has  been 
brought  to  life,  and  great  will  be  the  joy  in  Heaven  at  the 


OoD  OUR  Father,  361 

return  of  the  repentant  sinner."  Thus  by  the  grace  of 
adoption  we  live  under  the  law  of  love,  and  free  from  the 
bondage  of  degradation  and  suffering  we  enter  into  the 
privileges  of  children  of  God,  crying  Abba,  Father. 


■» 


The  Attributes  of  God. 


On  Monday  evening,  December  18,  1876,  Father  Burke  preached  the  fol- 
lowing sermon  in  the  Church  of  St.  Saviour,  Lower  Dominic  Street, 
Dublin.  It  is  a  faithful  delineation  of  its  subject,  and  contains  much 
profitable  food  for  meditation. 

"  Bend  down  your  dews,  O  ye  heavens  !    and  ye  clouds  rain  the  Just  One." 

THESE  words,  dear  brethren,  formed  the  subject  of  our 
meditation  on  a  former  evening,  and  I  have  also  chosen 
them  as  a  theme  on  which  to  address  you  to-night.  If  you 
remember,  I  told  you  that  we  should  consider,  during  these 
nine  days  of  preparation  for  Holy  Christmas,  the  attri- 
butes of  Almighty  God  as  they  are  revealed  to  us  in  the 
mystery  of  the  Incarnation.  Now,  dear  brethren,  what 
do  I  mean  by  the  attributes  of  God  ?  I  mean  that  there 
are  certain  virtues,  certain  qualities,  that  belong  to  Al- 
mighty God  essentially  and  necessarily  because  He  is  God. 
Every  man  among  us  has  his  certain  virtues  or  his  certain 
vices — certain  qualities,  whether  they  be  good  or  bad, 
which  mark  him,  which  designate  him,  and  which  form 
his  character.  One  man,  for  instance,  is  good-tempered, 
another  man  is  an  ill-tempered  man  ;  one  man  is  gene- 
rous and  hospitable,  another  man  is  close  and  avaricious ; 
one  man  is  meek  and  patient,  another  man  is  violent  and 
revengeful.  And  just  as  we  all  have  our  qualities  and 
virtues  or  vices,  so  there  are  certain  virtues  or  qualities 
which  belong  to  Almighty  God,  which  belong  to  Him  es- 
sentially and  necessarily  because  He  is  God,  which  form 
His  nature  ;  and  these  are  called  the  attributes  of  God.  I 
need  hardly  tell  you,   dearly  beloved,  that  among  those 

86S 


The  Attributes  of  God.  363 

attributes  there  are  no  vices,  because  God  is  all  holy  and 
all  perfect.  And  now,  among  the  attributes  of  God,  the 
very  first,  which  I  take  as  the  subject  of  this  evening's 
primary  meditation,  is  the  attribute  of  justice.  And  why  ? 
Because,  if  you  remark,  when  the  prophet  prayed  in  the 
words  of  my  text  for  the  heavens  to  rain  down  a  Saviour, 
he  called  him  a  Just  One.  "0  ye  heavens!"  he  said, 
''send  down  your  dews,  and  ye  clouds  rain  down  the  Just 
One."  It  is  therefore  lawful,  and  it  is  suggested  by  the 
theme,  that  I  should  treat  first  of  all  of  the  justice  of  Al- 
mighty God  as  revealed  to  us  in  the  incarnation  of  our 
Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ.  What  do  I  mean  by  jus- 
tice? Justice,  dearly  beloved,  is  that  particular  virtue 
which  either  in  God  or  man  gives  to  every  one  according 
to  his  desert ;  which  pays  to  every  one  what  is  due  to  him. 
When  we  speak  of  human  justice,  we  speak  of  the  virtue 
which,  embodied  in  the  public  law,  rewards  the  meritori- 
ous man  and  punishes  the  criminal  man.  When  we  speak 
of  commercial  justice,  we  speak  of  that  sacred  virtue  which 
pays  to  every  laborer  whatever  is  his  due,  whatever  he 
has  earned  by  tlie  sweat  of  his  brow.  When  we  speak  of 
civic  justice,  we  speak  of  the  justice  which  promotes  to 
any  honorable  position  in  the  state  only  the  man  who  is 
fitted  for  that  position.  And  the  moment  the  laborer  is 
defrauded  of  his  hire,  the  moment  an  unworthy  and  in- 
capable person  is  put  into  any  position  which  he  does  not 
deserve,  or  one  for  which  he  is  not  qualified,  we  all  ex- 
claim against  those  vices  and  call  them  injustice. 

Now,  whatever  there  is  of  justice  to  man  in  the  human 
mind,  in  the  human  heart,  in  human  society;  or  in  the 
human  law,  it  is  only  the  merest  reflection  of  that  infinite, 
essential,  and  unchanging  justice  which  is  the  very  nature 
of  Almighty  God.  Therefore,  speaking  to  God,  the  in- 
spired ones  of  Scripture  always  hail  Him  as  the  Just: 
Justus  est  Domine  et  rectum  judicatum  tuum — "O  Lord 
God !  Thou  art  just,  and  Thy  judgment  is  just."  And 
when  the  prophet  proclaimed  the  coming  of  the  Son  of 
God,  the  very  first  attribute  that  he  assigned  to  Him  was 


364  The  Attributes  of  God, 

the  attribute  of  justice.  "He  shall  judge  the  world  in 
judgment,  but  in  justice."  When,  therefore,  we  look  to 
Almighty  God,  whether  we  regard  Him  in  heaven  in  His 
dealings  with  His  angels,  or  whether  we  regard  Him  in  His 
dealings  with  man  upon  earth,  one  thing  is  certain,  that 
we  are  sure  to  find  in  the  action  of  Almighty  God  essen- 
tial, unchangeable,  and  eternal  justice :  "  Justitia  tua  jus- 
titia  in  eieriium,^ ^  ex.cliiims  the  psalmist — "OGod!  Thy 
Justice  is  eternal  justice."  It  may  seem  to  us,  dearly  be- 
loved brethren,  a  hard  thing  when  we  contemplate  the 
justice  of  the  Almighty  and  Eternal  God  ;  it  may  seem  a 
hard  and  terrible  law  this  justice,  I  grant  it.  I  for  one  am 
much  more  pleased  to  reflect  upon  the  mercy  of  God  than 
on  His  justice.  The  moment  I  turn  to  His  mercy  I  at  once 
get  into  the  region  of  Divine  love.  I  find  my  dear  Father, 
I  find  a  compassionate  and  considerate  heart,  a  kind  and 
bountiful  hand;  but  all  that  we  can  say  or  think,  dear 
brethren,  of  the  mercy  of  God,  should  not  cause  us  to 
shut  our  eyes  to  His  justice.  God  is  first  of  all  just.  He 
would  not  be  the  infinite  and  all  perfect  being  that  He  is 
if  those  attributes  of  justice  were  not  among  the  very  first 
of  those  essential  and  eternal  virtues  that  form  the  nature 
of  God.  And  therefore  it  is  that  no  matter  how  hard 
may  be  the  judgment,  it  is  still  compatible  with  justice. 

When  we  see  the  criminal  sentenced  to  death,  when 
we  are  horrified  by  hearing  the  sound  that  proclaims 
that  a  soul  has  been  sent  into  eternity,  when  the  expectant 
crowd  see  the  victim  immolated  upon  the  altar  of  public 
justice,  or  when  they  see  that  ominous  black  flag  held  out 
to  tell  that  the  man  is  gone,  that  his  soul  has  fled,  we  are 
terrified  at  the  majesty  and  awfulness  of  the  law.  But  is 
it  not  just?  The  man  who  has  been  thus  sacrificed  has 
shed  blood  ;  the  man  who  has  been  thus  sent  into  eternity 
has  violated  the  most  sacred  laws.  He  is  a  murderer,  and 
he  only  expiates  the  foul  crime  he  has  committed  ;  and 
whilst  on  the  one  hand  we  shudder  at  the  punishment,  on 
the  other  hand  we  are  strengthened  by  the  though!  tliat 
the  law  is  not  only  powerful  but  is  just,  and  is  founded 


The  Attributes  of  Ood.  365 

■Qpon  justice.  And,  dear  brethren,  when  we  rise  from  the 
contemplation  of  mere  human  justice,  and  come  to  regard 
this  attribute  in  the  Almighty  Grod,  oh  1  how  terrible  it  is 
— how  terrible  is  the  justice  of  God.  Our  faith  tells  us 
that  the  millions  and  millions  of  angels  were  created  around 
Him  pure-spirited,  iu  happiness,  in  glory,  almost  in  con- 
templation of  the  undisguised  vision  of  God.  Yet  they 
sinned,  and  the  moment  they  sinned  two-thirds  of  the 
angels  of  heaven— every  one  of  those  sacred  spirits  in 
whom  the  sin  was  found — were  cast  forth  in  an  instant,  in 
the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  from  heaven.  God  arose  in  the 
terror  and  awfulness  of  His  majesty  and  sent  them  down 
to  the  eternal  abyss  of  hell — howling  demons,  despoiled  of 
all  their  glory,  despoiled  of  all  their  brightness,  con- 
demned for  ever  and  ever,  never  to  see  the  light,  never  to 
see  the  face  of  the  Almighty  and  Eternal  God.  And  so, 
when  our  first  parents  sinned,  an  intelligence  as  bright  as 
that  of  the  angels  refused  to  admit  the  light  of  God's  holy 
law,  a  heart  as  pure  as  the  angels  refused  to  love  God,  a 
will  as  free  as  that  of  even  the  seraphim  and  chernbim  of 
God  refused  to  obey  Almighty  God.  All  this  was  when 
Adam  committed  his  sin.  And  I  tell  you,  my  brethren, 
that  if  you  or  I  this  night,  or  at  any  other  time,  consent 
to  commit  mortal  sin,  that  in  the  act,  whether  it  be  an 
act  of  the  will,  deliberately  indulging  in  impurity  of  the 
appetite,  deliberately  indulging  in  base  sensuality  of  the 
passions,  deliberately  indulging  revenge  of  the  intelli- 
gence, deliberately  embracing  infidelity — that  in  that  mo- 
ment you  and  I  commit  a  mortal  sin  we  commit  as  great 
a  crime  before  God  as  when  Lucifer,  the  light  of  heaven, 
refused  to  love  and  acknowledge  his  God  and  was  damned 
for  ever. 

An  intelligence  illuminated  by  the  light  of  faith  refuses 
to  act  by  its  love,  refuses  to  acknowledge  God  ;  a  heart 
opened  by  grace  refuses  to  love  God  ;  a  will  as  free  as  that 
of  God  Himself  refuses  to  obey  the  Almighty  God.  And 
God  is  as  much  dishonored  in  you  or  me  when  we  commit 
mortal  sin  as  He  was  dishonored  in  the  angels  whom  He 


366  The  Attrtbutes  of  God. 

sent  out  of  heaven  into  the  eternal  hell.  And  so  it  was 
with  Adam,  the  father  of  our  race  ;  and  when  he  commit- 
ted sin  he  called  forth  that  primary  attribute  of  Almighty 
God  which  is  eternal  justice.  God  loves  mercy  more  than 
He  loves  justice.  There  is  not  one  amongst  us  who  ha^ 
not  some  one  passion  that  overpowers  all  the  others  ;  there 
is  not  one  amongst  us  that  has  not  some  comer  in  his 
heart  where  there  is  some  particular  love  that  is  dearer  to 
him  than  all  others  ;  and  so  has  the  heart  of  God.  Mercy 
occupies  the  first  and  dearest  part,  and  God  loves  His 
mercy  more  than  He  loves  His  justice.  But  when  that 
mercy  is  abused,  and  when  the  justice  is  challenged,  then 
the  Almighty  God  rises  up  in  all  the  majesty  and  awful- 
ness  of  this  His  first  attribute,  and  the  God  of  mercy,  the 
God  of  love,  the  God  of  redemption  disappears,  and  the 
God  of  justice  alone  remains.  And  so  it  was  with  God  in 
His  dealings  with  Adam.  Adam  committed  the  sin  in 
which  he  not  only  sinned  himself,  but  in  which  he  impli- 
cated all  his  race  ;  for  we  who  live  six  thousand  years  after 
the  creation  of  our  first  parents,  we  sinned  in  Adam.  If 
you  ask  why  I  am  tormented  by  angry  passions,  why  I  am 
swayed  by  evil  desires,  why  do  I  find  it  so  difficult  to  do 
that  which  is  good  and  perfect  and  so  easy  to  do  that 
which  is  sinful  and  bad,  I  answer  because  you  and  I 
sinned  six  thousand  years  ago  when  Adam,  our  first  father, 
sinned.  In  that  sin  the  fountain  of  our  being  was  poi- 
soned, the  very  fountain-head  of  that  stream  which  has 
flowed  down  to  us  was  polluted,  and  then  the  justice 
of  God  was  challenged  for  the  first  time.  And  now  con- 
sider the  evil  that  was  committed.  It  was  an  evil  infinite 
in  itself  ;  for,  my  brethren,  there  was  no  measure,  no  limit 
to  the  evil  that  was  committed  when  Adam  committed  his 
first  mortal  sin.  And  why  ?  Because  he  offended,  forgot, 
and  violated  the  God  of  infinite  majesty,  the  God  who  had 
infinite  claims  upon  him,  a  God  to  whom  was  due  all  the 
service  man  could  render  him,  either  in  mind,  heart,  or 
hand — in  other  words,  by  intelligence,  love,  or  will. 

God  is  our  Creator.    All  that  we  have  He  has  given  us. 


The  Attributes  of  God.  367 

All  that  is  in  us  belongs  to  Him.    He  has  given  ns  a  mind 
capable  of  knowing,  and  He  demands  that  knowledge  by 
divine  faith.    He  has  given  us  a  heart  capable  of  loving, 
and  He  demands  that  that  heart  be  never  polluted  by  un- 
holy or   impure  affections.      He    has    given   us    a  will 
free  and  able  to  serve  Him.     He  demands  that  they  will 
never  serve  another  master,  never  observe  another  law  but 
His.    And,  dear  brethren,  when  the  mind,  the  heart,  and 
the  will  rebel  against  Almighty  God,  then  the  supreme, 
the  infinite,  and  the  eternal  Being  is  outraged  and  violated. 
His  holy  law  is  broken  to  pieces.  His  will  is  contradicted, 
His  attributes  are  denied  to  Him  ;  and  this  is  the  effect  of 
a  mortal  sin.      Then,  dearly  beloved,  the  question  is  no 
longer,   "  What  reward  can  my  love  give  him?"     He  de- 
serves none,  he  is  no  longer  a  child  worthy  of  love,  he  is 
an  enemy.     What  may  mercy  do  for  him  ?    There  is  no 
compact  between  God  the  just  and  this  sinner,  this  man 
permeated  with  sin  ;  it  is  only  a  question  of  justice  revolv- 
ing itself  into  simple  issue — What  penalty  is  due  to  this 
criminal  who  has  broken  the  law  of  God  ?     Is  it  not  so  in 
human  law  ;  should  it  not  be  so  in  the  divine  law  %    K  a 
man  steal  anything,  if  a  man  commit  highway  robbery,  if 
he  obtain  money  under  false  pretences,  if  he  be  riotous 
and  offend  against  the  law,  if  he  shed  the  blood  of  his  fel- 
low-man, if  there  be  murder  on  his  hands,  it  is  no  longer 
a  question  what  position  of  honor  shall  be  given  him,  what 
rewards  shall  be  heaped  upon  him,  what  high  station  shall 
he  be  placed  in.     No  ;  he  is  in  the  dock,  a  criminal ;  and 
the  only  question  that  remains  is  what  amount  of  punish- 
ment is  he  to  receive  for  his  crime  ;  and  that  punishment 
is  to  be  inflicted  in  proportion  to  the  enormity  of  the  crime. 
But  so  it  is  between  God  and  man — so  it  was  between  God 
and  the  whole  race  of  man  when  Adam  committed  his  sin. 
The  divine  justice  of  God  had  only  to  consider  two  things. 
First :  What  amount  of  punishment  is  to  be  given  to  the 
criminal  ?    Secondly :  Is  he  to  be  let  off ;  if  another  is  to 
take  his  place  to  receive  his  penalty,  what  manner  of  vic- 
tim will  satisfy  the  justice  of  God  ? 


368  The  Attributes  op  God. 

Behold  the  two  things  which  were  resolved  in  the  In- 
carnation ! — two  questions  relating  to  the  justice  of  God, 
that  show  forth  in  the  awful  mystery  of  becoming  man. 
First  of  all  He  became  man  in  order  to  provide  for  the 
justice  of  his  Eternal  Father — a  victim  capable  of  satisfy- 
ing that  justice.  Secondly,  He  became  man  in  order  to 
take  upon  himself  the  punishment  that  was  adequate  to 
the  crime  that  was  committed.  That  crime,  as  we  have 
seen,  was  infinite,  without  end,  without  limit.  My 
brethren,  hear  me.  We  are  capable  of  very  little ;  the  best 
amongst  us  can  do  but  very  little  ;  the  greatest  and  holiest 
amongst  us  can  do  so  little  for  God  or  for  man  that  our 
best  efforts  are  but  vile  rags,  as  the  Scripture  speaks  even 
of  the  justice  of  the  holiest.  The  greatest  man  that  ever 
lived  upon  this  earth — saint  or  sinner — did  but  very  little. 
We  are  not  capable  of  much ;  but  there  is  one  infinite  act 
of  which  the  least  amongst  us  is  capable,  and  I  am  sorry 
to  say  that  this  is  the  act  of  committing  mortal  sin.  There, 
indeed,  the  powers  which  are  so  limited  for  good  become 
infinite  for  evil.  I  can  do  scarcely  anything  for  God,  but 
if  I  choose  to  do  anything  against  God  I  can  do  something 
of  which  no  man  in  heaven  or  on  earth  can  comprehend  the 
enormity,  but  only  the  mind  of  God  Himself.  For  I  can 
crush  the  Almighty  God,  I  can  violate  and  tear  to  pieces 
every  law  of  God,  I  can  bid  defiance  to  His  omnipotent 
divinity,  I  can  deny  His  wisdom,  I  can  outrage  His  sanc- 
tity, and  laugh  at  His  pretensions  of  human  beauty  ;  and 
I  can  turn  to  the  vilest  and  basest  passions  of  earth,  and 
say  to  that  foul  impurity,  to  that  vile  drunkenness,  to  that 
dreadful  revenge,  "Thou  art  fairer  to  me  than  God;  I 
will  take  thee  instead  of  God  ;  I  will  hold  thee,  I  will  serve 
thee,  I  will  clasp  thee  to  my  heart ;  let  God  depart,  I  will 
not  have  Him  nor  His  ways."  Such  is  the  nature  of  sin, 
and  then  the  Almighty  God  launclied  out  on  every  attri- 
bute of  omnipotence,  of  divine  wisdom,  and  of  mercy 
despoiled  and  contradicted,  and  all  are  absorbed  into  one 
assertion  of  God's  awful  and  terrible  justice  ;  and  so  it  was 
between  God  and  man  when  Adam  sinned.    Therefore,  the 


The  Attributes  of  God.  369 

evil  being  infinite,  two  things  were  necessary,  my  beloved ; 
first  of  all,  if  God's  justice  is  ever  to  be  appeased,  it  must 
be  with  a  punishment  equal  to  the  injury  which  is  done  to 
Him,  it  must  be  with  a  punishment  equal  to  the  crime 
which  is  committed ;  if  the  punishment  inflicted  is  not 
equal  to  the  crime  whicli  is  committed,  then  justice  is 
never  satisfied. 

Justice  is  only  blinded,  and  justice  is  only  set  aside ; 
the  exact  measure  of  justice  is  never  filled  up  unless  the 
punishment  is  equal  to  the  crime.  Mercy  and  the  other 
attributes  may  come  in,  God  may  still  be  merciful  and 
good  and  loving,  but  He  ceases  to  be  just  unless  the  pun- 
ishment be  equal  to  the  offence.  More  than  this,  if  the 
justice  of  God  is  ever  to  be  satisfied  it  can  only  be  satisfied 
by  one  who  is  equal  in  his  own  sanctity  to  the  sanctity 
wliich  was  outraged  and  violated  by  the  son  of  man,  one 
who  is  as  holy  as  God  Himself,  one  who  is  as  powerful  in 
expiation  as  man  was  in  violation  of  God's  law — and  be- 
hold the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation.  It  is  a  question  now 
of  providing  a  victim  able  to  atone  for  the  sins  of  man — not 
merely  for  the  sins  of  Adam,  but  for  the  sins  of  all  the 
children  of  Adam  for  four  thousand  years,  and  as  long  as 
the  world  shall  last.  It  is  a  question  not  only  of  providing 
a  victim  able  to  do  this,  but  a  victim  who  will  consent  to 
take  upon  himself  a  punishment  perfectly  adequate  to  the 
crimes  committed.  Look  up,  look  up  to  the  highest 
heavens,  O  ye  sons  of  man  !  We  are  a  fallen  race.  God 
wishes  to  save  us,  God  wishes  to  redeem  us,  but  God  can- 
not do  it  unless  the  measure  of  His  justice  is  satisfied. 
Look  up  to  heaven  now,  and  tell  man  there  are  nine  choirs 
of  angels  there :  there  are  the  shining  seraphim,  the  ador- 
ing cherubim,  and  thrones,  powers,  and  principalities, 
archangels  and  angels— is  there  one  among  them,  nay, 
more,  if  among  them  combined,  will  they  be  able  to  satisfy 
the  justice  of  God  for  your  sins  and  for  mine  ?  Ah !  no ; 
ah !  no.  They  might  expend  themselves  and  annihilate 
themselves,  they  might  cast  themselves  down  to  suffer  for 
eternity  in  hell  for  our  sins ;  but  they  are  only  the  creatures 


370  The  Attributes  of  God. 

of  God,  and  all  that  they  can  do  is  finite  or  circumscribed 
by  the  fact  that  they  are  only  creatures ;  the  debt  is  in- 
finite, and  the  satisfaction  which  is  not  infinite  can  never 
pay  the  debt. 

Nay,  if  all  the  angels  in  heaven  were  to  combine  and  an- 
nihilate themselves  into  the  nether  hell  for  all  eternity, 
would  that  eternal  punishment  wipe  out  our  sin  ?  No,  no  ; 
because  the  sin  is  an  infinite  evil,  and  all  the  punishment 
that  can  fall  upon  creatures  even  for  the  eternity  of  hell  is 
bounded  by  the  mere  fact  of  their  finite  creation,  and  can- 
not pay  an  eternal  and  infinite  debt.  One  alone  can  do  it. 
One  alone  can  pay  this  debt.  One  alone  can  bear  the  ful- 
ness of  the  anger  and  the  fulness  of  the  wrath  of  the  Al- 
mighty God.  One  alone  can  do  it,  but  oh  !  the  thought  is 
blasphemy ;  how  can  we  think  it,  that  one  is  the  eternal 
God  Himself — God  Himself  !  Can  God  become  a  victim ; 
can  God  take  upon  Him  our  punishment ;  can  God  take 
upon  Him  what  is  worse  than  our  punishment — our  sin ; 
can  God  take  upon  Him  all  the  grief,  all  the  sorrow,  all 
the  misery  that  is  necessary  for  the  work  of  expiation  ? 
All  that  seems  too  terrible  for  our  minds  to  entertain ;  but 
that  which  is  too  much  for  us  entered  into  the  mind  of 
God.  The  Second  Person  of  the  Adorable  Trinity  rose  up 
and  said :  "  Behold  me,  O  Father  !  behold  me.  At  the  head 
of  the  book  it  is  written  of  me  that  I  should  do  Thy  will. 
Sacrifice  and  oblation  Thou  wouldst  not ;  Thou  hast  pre- 
pared a  liuman  body,  for  I  will  go  down  from  my 
high  place  in  heaven ;  I  will  become  a  child  of  an  earthly 
woman  upon  the  earth ;  I  will  become  as  true  man  in 
times  as  I  have  been  true  God  in  eternity ;  I  wUl 
bring  with  me  all  the  infinite  holiness  of  my  divine 
nature  ;  I  will  bring  with  me  the  fulness  of  my 
divinity ;  I  will  go  down  to  earth ;  I  will  bare  this 
sinless  bosom  and  hold  out  these  immaculate  hands 
of  mine,  O Father!  to  receive  the  awful  brunt  of  Thine 
anger,  and  the  full  and  the  awful  torrent  of  Thy  wrath ; 
I  will  take  blood  that  I  may  shed  it ;  I  will  take  a  hu- 
man heart   that  I  may   break  it ;  I    will  take  human 


The  Attributes  of  God,  ^"''9% 

members  and  senses  that  I  may  crush  them  under  the 
weight  of  Thine  anger  and  Thy  vengeance ;  I  will  bear 
the  iniquities  of  all  who  have  ever  sinned  against  Thee  " — 
and  behold  the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation.  God  Himself 
provided  a  victim  able  to  bear  the  full  tide  of  divine  and 
infinite  wrath — God  Himself  provided  a  victim,  whose  every 
prayer,  whose  every  sigh,  whose  every  word,  whose  every 
suffering,  whose  every  drop  of  blood  was  of  infinite  value, 
because  they  were  the  prayers,  the  sighs,  the  words,  the 
sufferings,  and  the  blood  of  God  Himself.  And  so  He 
came,  the  Virgin's  Child ;  so  He  came,  beloved,  whom  we 
shall  greet  upon  Christmas  night,  beholding  Him  as  our 
only  Saviour ;  so  He  came,  a  little  child,  to  grow  into  youth, 
and  from  youth  to  manhood,  not  for  joy  but  for  suffering, 
not  for  enjoyment  but  for  torment. 

Every  member,  every  sense  of  His  body,  every  faculty 
of  His  human  soul,  impressed  within  Him,  preserving  in 
the  infinite  unity  of  the  hypostatical  union  all  the  integ- 
rity and  the  fulness  of  His  divinity,  and  ripening  and 
maturing  only  that  when  He  comes  to  the  fulness  of  His 
manhood  He  may  be  stretched  out  on  the  cross,  and  then 
die,  immolated  by  the  wrath  of  God  and  the  malignity  of 
man,  and  by  the  shedding  of  His  heart' s  blood  wipe  away 
the  decree  of  eternal  death.  He  only  was  fit  to  plead  and 
suffer  for  us,  because  He  alone  could  bear  our  offences. 
' '  The  Lord  put  upon  Him  the  iniquities  of  us  all,"  exclaim- 
ed the  prophet.  He  alone  was  fit  to  expiate  our  offences, 
for  He  alone,  by  every  act  of  humiliation,  by  suffering  and 
by  rising,  was  able  to  give  more  glory  to  God  than  even 
man  could  deprive  Him  of  by  his  sin ;  and  so  He  came. 
And  now  mark  :  the  justice  of  the  Almighty  and  Eternal 
Father  was  completely  satisfied  in  the  mystery  of  the  In- 
carnation by  the  humility,  the  prayers,  the  suffering,  and 
the  death  of  His  Divine  Son — completely  satisfied  ;  not 
a  single  claim  remained  of  that  justice  upon  Him.  Let  me 
drive  this  into  your  minds.  Christ  our  Lord  took  upon 
Himself  all  our  sins,  and  He  so  expiated  those  sins  that 
the  Eternal  Father  completely  forgot  His  justice,  as  if  it 


372  The  AttriBiUtes  of  God, 

never  had  existed,  as  if  Adam  never  had  sinned,  as  if  man- 
kind never  had  fallen.  The  Eternal  Father  was  completely- 
satisfied,  the  last  farthing  of  the  debt  was  paid  by  our 
Divine  Saviour,  and  we  were  baptized  unto  God.  We,  the 
children  of  God  through  His  Holy  Church,  do  not  live 
at  all  under  the  reign  of  God's  justice.  There  is  no  such 
thing.  I  proclaim  to  you  a  consoling  Gospel.  God  has 
ifttained  for  us  the  attributes  of  His  mercy,  of  His  love, 
and  of  His  fathership  ;  for,  as  we  shall  see  in  a  subsequent 
meditation,  we  have  all  become  the  adopted  children  of 
God  through  Christ  our  Lord.  But  I  deny  that  His  justice 
exists.  There  is  no  such  thing.  That  justice  was  satisfied, 
that  justice  was  completely  appeased,  by  the  incarnation 
and  the  life  and  the  sufferings  of  Jesus  Christ,  my  Brother 
and  my  God.  You  never  can  experience  it ;  it  never  will 
touch  you  ;  it  never  will  come  home  to  you  ;  it  will  never 
exact  one  single  account  from  one  of  you,  unless,  indeed, 
by  your  own  sinful  acts  you  choose  to  go  out  of  the  region 
of  mercy  into  which  our  Redeemer  brought  us,  and  come 
back  again  to  tlie  region  of  justice.  God  has  no  justice  for 
you,  only  mercy,  only  love,  unless  by  your  own  act  you 
prefer  justice  to  mercy,  and  the  anger  of  God  to  His  love. 
The  Christian  law  is  a  law  of  love.  The  child  baptized 
receives  such  graces  in  baptism,  such  fellowship  with 
Christ  our  Lord,  such  sonship  of  God,  that  if  that  child 
only  preserves  the  graces  of  baptism,  if  that  child  only 
keeps  what  lie  gets,  there  is  no  justice  for  him,  nor  for  you 
nor  for  me  if  we  only  consent  to  abide  in  that  holy  atmos- 
phere of  mercy  into  which  our  Divine  Lord  led  us.  There 
was  justice,  and  terrible  justice ;  terrible  and  heavy  was  the 
hand  of  that  just  God  that  spared  not  His  own  Holy  and 
Immaculate  Child,  but  forced  the  Blood  from  every  pore 
of  His  Sacred  Body  in  Gethsemani,  and  that  Blood  that 
flowed  forth  next  morning  from  every  open  and  terrible 
wound  under  the  scourge,  and  finally  broke  His  heart 
upon  the  Cross.  God's  justice  could  go  no  farther  ;  there 
is  no  justice  for  you  or  me,  unless,  indeed,  as  I  said  before, 
we  choose  of  our  own  free  will  to  go  out  of  mercy  and 


Tee  Attributes  of  God.  373 

challenge  the  justice  of  God  by  our  sin.  A^j, !  dearly  be- 
loved, if  we  do  this,  then  the  justice  that  awaits  us  is  far 
more  terrible  than  if  Jesus  Christ  had  never  paid  our 
debts — far  more  terrible.  We  read  in  the  Gospel  that  a 
servant- man  who  owed  his  master  ten  thousand  talents 
was  brought  before  him,  and,  kneeling  down,  he  said: 
"O  master!  have  pity  on  me  and  give  me  time,  and  I 
will  pay  the  last  farthing."  He  got  the  time;  his  debt 
was  forgiven  ;  not  only  did  he  get  the  time  to  pay  it,  but 
he  was  absolved  from  all  payment — the  master  forgave  him 
all.  But  in  a  few  hours  that  servant  was  brought  back, 
and  he  was  put  before  the  same  master,  and  he  was  ac- 
cused of  other  crimes  ;  he  w^as  accused  of  his  mercilessness 
to  his  fellow- servants.  Then  there  was  no  more  mercy  in 
the  master's  heart.  "Take  him,"  he  said;  "take  his 
wife,  take  his  children,  sell  them  as  slaves  ;  bind  him  hand 
and  foot,  and  cast  him  into  a  loathsome,  dark  dungeon.  I 
forgave  him  the  ten  thousand  talents  he  owed  me  ;  now  I 
declare  and  swear  that  I  will  never  let  him  go  unless  he 
pays  his  last  farthing."  Why  was  the  master  so  terrible 
in  his  second  interview  ?  Because  he  had  forgiven  the  debt 
at  first,  because  it  was  already  remitted,  and  it  was  only 
taken  back  by  the  wickedness  of  this  servant. 

And  so,  dearly  beloved,  when  you  or  I  commit  sin,  I 
care  not  what  sin  it  be,  it  is  a  thousand  times  worse  than 
if  Christ  our  Lord  had  never  come  down  from  heaven  to 
pay  the  debt  for  us.  "Woe  unto  you,  Jerusalem,  woe 
unto  you,  Naim !"  says  the  Lord  ;  "  'twere  better  for  thee  I 
had  never  come  amongst  thee."  Why?  Because  Christ 
our  Lord  in  his  Incarnation  paid  our  debt ;  He  made  Him- 
self responsible  for  it.  He  paid  it.  He  shed  His  heart's 
blood  to  pay  it.  ISTow,  any  man  that  incurs  the  debt  of  sin 
again  not  only  incurs  the  debt  of  the  act  of  Christ,  but 
aggravates  the  malice  of  that  act  by  abusing  the  Sacred 
Blood  that  was  paid  in  ransom  for  him,  and  by  trampling 
upon  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ.  Yes,  yes,  dearly 
beloved,  that  Son  of  God  has  laid  Himself  down  upon  the 
Cross,  a  broken  heart  in  a  dying  body,  and  He  lies  between 


374  The  Attributes  of  God. 

us  and  hell.  Of  old,  before  He  came,  the  gates  of  hell 
were  wide  open,  that  every  man  might  freely  enter  there, 
but  neither  you  nor  I  can  enter  there  any  more  nnless  we 
walk  over  the  dead  body  of  Jesus  Christ.  He  has  put 
Himself  between  us  and  hell ;  He  has  closed  hell  by  the 
shedding  of  His  blood,  and  any  man  who  wishes  to  go 
down  into  nether  hell  by  mortal  sin  must  not  only  commit 
sin,  but  he  must  make  a  mockery  of  the  Son  of  God  and 
^^eify  Him  again  before  he  can  attain  his  infernal  end. 
Let  us,  my  brethren,  in  our  great  gratitude  to  Him  who 
paid  an  infinite  debt  by  sustaining  an  infinite  punishment — 
if  for  no  other  reason,  for  the  sake  of  our  Divine  Lord  who 
has  come  into  the  midst  of  us,  coming  a  man  into  the 
midst  of  His  fellow-men,  coming  Himself  a  son  unto  the 
children  of  woman,  coming  to  take  all  the  weakness  and 
the  miseries  and  the  suffering  of  our  own  upon  Himself, 
coming  to  make  Himself  familiar  with  our  wants,  with  our 
sorrows,  to  bear  them  all  that  He  may  understand  them 
the  better,  and  touch  them,  as  it  were,  with  the  more  sci- 
entific hand, — if  for  His  sake  alone,  let  us  make  this  reso- 
lution to-night,  dearly  beloved  :  that  we  shall  never  again 
offend  Him  by  sin ;  that,  no  matter  what  shall  come  to  us, 
one  thing  at  least  we  must  not  allow  to  come  to  us,  the 
guilt  of  mortal  sin  ;  that  no  matter  what  we  may  do,  and 
what  act  of  folly  we  may  commit,  we  will  never  commit 
the  act  of  cruelty,  of  trampling  upon  One  whose  love  is 
tender,  whose  omnipotence  was  made  into  weakness,  whose 
brightness  was  made  into  obscurity,  whose  infinite  beauty 
was  made  into  deformity,  "  a  worm  and  not  a  man,"  whom 
no  man  recognized  as  a  man  because  of  the  deformity  that 
His  sufferings  cast  upon  Him.  Have  pity  upon  Jesus 
Christ,  have  pity  upon  Him  !  He  is  coming  to  you  this 
Christmas  ;  He  is  coming  to  be  born  again  upon  earth.  Give 
Him  a  place  in  your  hearts  and  let  him  be  bom  in  every 
bosom  amongst  you.  Do  not  close  the  gates  of  your  hearts, 
as  the  foolish  people  of  Bethlehem  closed  their  gates 
against  Mary  when  she  came  and  asked  them  for  a  night's 
shelter.    Ah !  my  brethren,  let  Him  be  born  amongst  you. 


The  Attributes  of  God.  375 

The  stable  was  poor  and  humble,  but  there  was  no  sin 
there.  No  matter  how  humble  our  hearts  may  be,  or  how 
unworthy,  at  least  let  us  by  a  good  confession  and  a  pre- 
paration for  a  subsequent  communion  purge  these  hearts 
of  anything  that  is  sinful,  that  so  the  Son  of  God  may  be 
born  freely  and  really  in  every  heart  of  ours  by  Holy 
Communion.  For  so  every  man  amongst  us  may  bfeome 
a  Bethlehem  to  the  Almighty  God,  that  He  may  be  bom 
in  us,  that  he  may  grow  in  us,  and  come  to  the  fulness  of 
His  manhood  in  us,  and  when  the  hour  of  death  comes 
that  our  dying  may  find  us  with  Jesus  Christ.  "Blessed 
are  the  dead  who  die  in  the  Ix)rd," 


The  Mystery  of  the  Incarnation. 


The  following  is  one  of  the  series  of  Advent  sermons  preached  by  Father 
Burke  in  the  Dominican  Church,  Dominic  Street,  Dublin,  1877.  The 
Mystery  of  the  Incarnation  is  depicted  in  language  simple  yet  eloquent, 
and  the  discourse  is  a  masterly  one,  on  a  theme  which  cannot  be  too 
clearly  understood  by  all  faithful  Christians. 

VERITAS  de  terra  orta  est,  etjustitia  de  ccelo  inspexit — 
"  The  truth  hath  sprung  up  from  earth,  and  justice  hath 
looked  down  from  heaven."  In  these  words  again,  my 
dearly  beloved,  the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation  is  unfolded 
and  put  before  us  in  the  prophetic  language  of  the  Scrip- 
ture. We  have  already  considered  two  attributes  of  God 
that  shine  out  and  are  made  manifest  to  us  in  the  adorable 
mystery  of  the  Incarnation — in  that  Word  Eternal  who  was 
conceived  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  bom  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  and 
made  man.  The  first  of  the  attributes  to  which  I  invited 
your  pious  attention  was  the  attribute  of  the  eternal  jus- 
tice of  Almighty  God,  so  completely  api)eased,  so  entirely 
satisfied  in  the  Incarnation  and  Atonement  of  His  Divine  Son. 
The  second  attribute  you  considered  last  evening — namely, 
the  infinite  mercy  of  God  as  manifested  in  the  Incarnation 
of  the  Eternal  Word.  Now,  this  evening  we  come  to  con- 
eider  the  third  great  attribute,  or  property,  or  virtue,  or 
quality  of  Almighty  God  that  shines  forth  bright  and  ador- 
able on  us  in  this  great  mystery.  That  attribute  is  the 
essential  and  eternal  truth  of  Almighty  God.  When,  then, 
I  come  to  consider  that  truth  more  closely,  wlien  I  ask  my- 
self what  it  is  and  where  it  is  to  be  found,  I  find,  strange  to 

say,  that  I  need  not  look  up  into  the  high  heaven  to  be- 
ars 


Tme  Mystery  of  the  Incarnation.  377 

hold  it.  I  need  not  mount  upon  the  wings  of  contempla- 
tion or  of  prayer  to  grasp  it.  The  prophet  of  God, 
illumined  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  lays  it  at  my  feet.  Truth, 
truth  eternal  and  essential,  has  actually  sprung  out  of  the 
earth.  These  words  mean,  dearly  beloved  brethren,  that 
the  eternal  truth  of  God,  abiding  in  God  from  all  eternity, 
from  the  very  nature  and  the  essentials  of  the  being  of 
that  Almighty  God  who  never  had  beginning,  has  come 
down  from  heaven  to  earth,  has  taken  its  place  upon  the 
earth,  has  sprung  out  of  the  earth,  made  manifest  to  us 
who  are  the  children  of  the  earth,  earthy,  in  the  manhood 
and  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ,  our  Lord  and  Saviour. 
In  other  words,  the  clearest  and  the  most  glorious  manifes- 
tation of  God's  eternal  and  divine  truth  that  was  ever 
made  by  Him,  that  ever  could  be  made  by  Him  to  angel  in 
heaven  or  man  upon  tlie  earth,  was  made  when  the  truth 
itself  became  incarnate  in  the  Eternal  Son  of  the  Virgin 
Mary — our  Divine  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

Let  us  once  again  consider  the  words  of  the  prophet : 
''Truth  has  sprung  out  of  the  earth,  and  Justice  hath  looked 
down  from  heaven."  In  simple  explanation  or  paraphrase 
of  this  great  sentence,  truth  had  sprung  out  of  the  virgin 
earth  of  Mary  in  the  sacred  humanity  of  our  Divine  Lord 
and  Master,  Jesus  Christ — the  truth  that  drew  aside  the 
dark  screen  that  hid  the  light  from  the  world.  Justice 
looked  down  from  heaven  ;  the  searching  eye  of  God  be- 
held His  Son  upon  the  earth,  and  the  Justice  of  God  could 
find  no  error,  no  fault,  no  blemish  in  the  light  of  that  truth 
that  sprang  from  Mary.  God's  essential  and  eternal  truth 
was  upon  the  earth.  That  truth  had  been  hidden  from  men ; 
it  had,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  almost  disappeared  from 
the  vision  of  the  sons  of  man,  until  the  time  of  that  advent 
when  Truth  the  Eternal  appeared  upon  the  earth  in  the 
person  of  the  Man-God,  Jesus  Christ.  Truth  is  an  infinite 
and  an  essential  element  of  God.  Consider,  my  dearly  be- 
loved, what  this  word  Veritas  means.  It  has  been  defined, 
by  one  who  holds  the  highest  rank  in  the  Church  of  God, 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas — one  who  also  stands  high  in  the 


STS  The  Mystery  of  the  Incarnation. 

estimation  of  the  world  among  those  geniuses  whom  God 
gives  from  time  to  time  to  the  sons  of  men, — truth  he  de- 
fines to  mean  the  exact  correspondence  with  the  fact  that 
it  represents. 

There  are  facts  of  many  and  various  kinds ;  some  are 
eternal  and  divine,  some  are  merely  temporary,  accidental, 
and  human.  That  God  exists  is  a  divine  and  eternal  fact. 
That  God  is  all  that  He  is,  is  a  divine  and  eternal  fact. 
Whether  we  choose  to  believe  it  or  not,  it  remains  the 
same  for  all  eternity  in  all  the  integrity  and  grandeur  of 
its  existence.  The  existence  of  God,  the  existence  in  which 
His  divine  and  infinite  attributes  are  grouped,  is  a  fact 
eternal  and  divine,  existing  entirely  independent  of  our 
knowledge,  appreciation,  or  love.  H  all  the  men  upon  the 
earth  were  infidels,  God  would  still  be  what  He  is.  If  all 
the  angels  in  heaven  had  joined  in  Lucifer's  rebellion  and 
become  demons  in  hell,  it  would  not  diminish  one  iota  the 
reality  of  God's  eternal  holiness,  of  His  wisdom,  of  His 
mercy,  of  His  power,  of  any  one  of  those  attributes  that 
surround  His  being.  As  there  are  in  heaven  facts  eternal, 
uncreated,  and  divine,  so  there  are  on  earth  facts  created, 
accidental,  and  human.  Tliat  you  or  I  should  exist  is  the 
merest  accident  in  the  creation  of  God.  God  so  wUled  it, 
and  we  exist.  But  not  to  will  it  was  free  to  Him.  If  God 
had  not  so  willed  to  draw  us  forth  from  the  infinite  mass 
of  possible  being,  we  could  never  have  sprung  into  the 
conscious  existence  that  we  enjoy  before  God  to-day. 

Truth  means  the  exact  correspondence  with  the  fact 
which  it  represents,  whether  it  be  word  spoken  by  the 
lips,  or  a  thought  conceived  in  the  mind,  or  an  action  of 
a  man's  life;  the  truthfulness  of  tliat  word,  thought,  or 
action  depends  upon  its  exact  and  faithful  representation 
of  the  fact  which  it  professes  to  interpret.  You  will  par- 
don me  if  I  lead  you  somewliat  aside  into  the  more  abstruse 
reasons  of  metaphysical  argument.  Truth  means  nothing 
more  or  less  in  thought,  word,  or  action  than  simple  re- 
ality. When  we  talk  of  men  as  truthful  or  untruthful — 
when  we  say  of  such  a  one,  I  know  him,  he  is  a  true  man, 


The  Mystery  of  the  Incarnation.  379 

we  mean  only  that  he  is  a  real  man,  a  man  whose  every 
action  is  based  on  the  principles  which  he  professes  to 
guide  him,  a  man  who  has  seen  intellectual  facts,  who 
acknowledges  their  breadth,  their  strength,  their  im- 
portance, and  who  gives  in  his  life  a  representation  of  the 
reality  of  his  principles  and  belief.  When  we  say  of  a  man 
that  his  language  is  truthful,  it  means  that  he  is  a  man 
that  never  by  the  words  of  his  lips  gives  a  false  interpre- 
tation of  the  belief  of  his  heart.  The  liar  is  the  man  whose 
words  are  not  in  accordance  with  his  thoughts,  who  may 
by  superior  knowledge  be  acquainted  with  facts  of  which 
others  are  ignorant,  but  who  misinterprets  them  in  hia 
words  and  tells  them  as  they  are  not.  Reality  is  truth. 
God  is  essential  truth  and  essential  reality.  Reflect,  my 
dearly  beloved,  upon  this.  Take,  for  instance,  the  mys- 
tery of  the  Adorable  Trinity.  God  is  one  in  His  essential 
substance  and  nature,  not  only  undivided  but  undivisible — 
incapable  of  division.  He  is  not  merely  one,  but  He  is 
unity  itself.  He  is  not  one  by  any  form  of  union  or  coali- 
tion of  different  individuals  or  substances.  We,  for  in- 
stance, are  one  nation.  We  are  the  Irish  people,  one  as  a 
nation,  yet  divisible  into  millions  of  individuals.  This  is 
not  unity  but  union.  God  in  His  aggregate  of  His  infinite 
perfections  is  also  unity.  To  diminish  one  iota  of  His 
eternal  and  divine  perfections  would  be  to  destroy  the  ex- 
istence of  God.  God  is  infinitely  perfect  and  infinitely 
beautiful.  He  is  essential  and  eternal  action.  Almighty 
God,  who  is  without  beginning,  of  necessity  from  all 
eternity  contemplated  His  own  divine  beauty.  The 
moment  He  looked  upon  Himself  He  saw  the  vision  of  Hia 
own  infinite,  divine,  and  uncreated  beauty.  This  very 
conception  of  Himself  assumed  the  proportions  of  the 
Eternal  Son.  The  conception  of  God  in  the  mind  of  God 
is  the  Second  Person  of  the  Adorable  Trinity.  God  is  of 
such  eternal  substance  that  the  very  thought  of  His  mind 
at  once  assumes  substance  too  in  the  form  of  the  Second 
Person  of  the  Adorable  Trinity,  the  Word  of  God,  the 
game  in  nature,  the  same  in  essentials,  the  same  in  sub- 


380  The  Mystery  of  the  Incarnation. 

stance  as  the  Father,  from  whom  He  springs,  bearing  to 
the  Father,  who  conceived  Him  in  an  eternal  generation, 
an  infinite  love,  which  that  Father  returns  with  an  equal 
love,  and  such  is  the  reality  of  God  that  the  very  love  of 
the  Father  for  the  conception  of  Himself,  and  the  love  of 
the  Son  for  the  Father  that  had  begotten  Him,  assumed  the 
personality  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  Third  Person  of  the 
Holy  Trinity.  The  very  essential  life  and  action  of  God 
from  His  reality  in  this,  that  one  in  nature,  indivisible  in 
essentiality  and  substance,  God  the  Son  and  God  the  Holy 
Ghost  are  the  offspring  of  action  inscrutable  and  incon- 
ceivable, infinite  and  eternal— the  offspring  of  the  reality 
of  God.  Passing  over  the  intervening  actions  of  Almighty 
God,  the  creation  of  the  angels  and  of  man,  we  come  to  the 
mystery  for  whose  fitting  contemplation  we  prepare-  our- 
selves by  this  novena — the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation. 
Here^God,  the  only  God,  the  selfsame  God  in  the  Father, 
the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  infinite  in  action,  infinite  in 
power,  infinite  in  wisdom,  infinite  in  mercy,  infinite  in 
love,  undertakes  an  act,  great,  solemn,  and  holy,  but,  in 
the  language  of  scholastic  theology,  a  personal  action  to- 
wards Himself.  It  is  no  longer  a  question  of  the  action 
of  God  in  Himself,  but  of  God  taking  a  new  element  to 
Himself.  The  Incarnation  did  not  make  God  other  than 
He  was  from  all  eternity,  but  it  added  a  temporal  (after  its 
assumption  eternal)  nature  which  He  had  not  before.  The 
Word  was  made  flesh,  God  became  man  ;  He  was  n  nal 
and  true  man,  as  real  and  as  true  a  man  as  ever  a\:is  born 
of  woman  upon  this  earth.  Let  us  try  to  realize,  my 
brethren,  what  this  means.  It  means  that  God,  who 
was  incapable  of  suffering  or  sorrow,  made  Himself  capable 
of  sorrow  the  deepest,  of  suffering  the  most  intense  that 
ever  mortal  man  endured.  God  became  man  !  It  means 
that  Life  essential  and  eternal  made  Himself  capable  of 
suffering  not  merely  pain  and  sorrow  but  the  bitterness  of 
death,  the  ignominy  of  the  grave.  He  remained  the  same 
God  truly  and  entirely  that  He  had  been  from  all  eternity ; 
as  truly  did  He  become  man,  as  truly  was  He  conceived  in 


The  Mystery  of  the  Incarnation.  381 

Mary's  womb  and  born  unto  Mary's  arms  as  ever  man  was 
conceived  and  born  on  this  earth.  God  carried  His  own 
truthfulness  down  with  Him  from  heaven  to  earth. 

Remember  what  I  said — truth  means  reality.  It  was  a 
question,  then,  of  redeeming  man  from  his  sins,  of  atoning 
for  the  past  and  future  transgressions  of  our  race,  of  sa- 
tisfying the  justice,  of  wiping  away  the  handwriting  of 
death  which  tlie  hand  of  an  angry  God  had  written  against 
the  name  of  man.  For  that  task  suffering  and  sorrow  were 
essential. 

The  spilling  of  blood  was  necessary  for  our  redemp- 
tion. But  God  might,  if  He  chose,  have  assumed  such  a 
body  as  the  Archangel  Raphael  took  when  he  came  down 
from  heaven  to  Tobias.  The  angel,  indeed,  appeared  in 
the  form  of  a  man.  His  body  was  in  all  outward  semblance 
the  body  of  a  man  :  a  form  that  a  man  could  touch,  with 
eyes  to  see,  and  ears  to  hear,  and  tongue  to  speak,  and 
hand  that  could  grasp  the  hand  of  a  friend.  But  his  body 
was  not  a  real  human  body  after  all.  When  the  matters 
were  performed  for  which  he  had  been  despatched  to  earth, 
and  when  the  will  of  God  had  been  accomplisiied,  his  body 
resolved  itself  again  into  the  atmosphere  of  which  it  was 
compacted,  and  the  archangel  sprang  back  to  his  place 
among  the  blessed  spirits  the  same  as  when  he  left  it.  He 
brought  no  vestige  of  humanity  back  with  him  to  heaven  ; 
the  angels,  his  companions  in  glory,  beheld  him  the  same 
on  liis  return  as  at  his  departure.  The  body  he  had  taken 
was  redissolved  in  the  elements  from  which  it  had  been 
drawn.  God  might  have  entered  into  such  a  body  for  all 
the  necessary  purposes  of  expiation.  He  might  have 
lived  and  labored  in  such  a  body  even  as  Raphael  jour- 
neyed and  labored  with  his  young  charge  Tobias ;  and 
then,  when,  by  the  spilling  of  one  drop  of  blood,  by  the 
shedding  of  one  tear,  by  the  utterance  of  one  prayer 
breathed  from  the  lips  He  had  himself  created,  expiation 
was  performed,  he  might  have  returned  to  heaven,  man's 
redemption  accomplished,  the  same,  unaltered  in  sub- 
stance or  in  nature,  as  when  He  left  His  Father's  bosom. 


382  The  Mystery  of  the  Incarnatton, 

Such  a  body  might  Grod  have  assumed  as  the  Angel  Ga- 
briel wore  when  he  appeared  to  Mary  at  prayer  in  the 
temple.  ^''Apparent  angelus  ez,"  saith  the  Scripture. 
Now,  an  angel  is  a  pure  spirit,  and  the  bodily-created  eye 
of  man  cannot  behold  him ;  God,  therefoce,  created  for 
him  a  body  cut  out  of  the  surrounding  ambient  air,  that 
he  might  become  manifest  to  the  Virgin,  that  he  might 
give  to  her  the  message  of  God,  that  he  miglit  say  to  her : 
"Behold,  thou  shalt  conceive  in  thy  womb,  and  thou 
shalt  bring  forth  a  son,  and  shall  call  his  name  Jesus." 
And  when  his  mission  was  accomplished,  when  the  Eter- 
nal Word  came  down  from  the  highest  heaven  to  take  up 
his  abode  in  the  pure  womb  of  the  Virgin,  for  a  moment 
the  angel  knelt  in  prostrate  adoration  of  the  present 
Deity,  and  then  flew  back  to  heaven,  his  body  redissolved 
into  the  elements,  to  announce  to  his  celestial  companions 
that  the  work  of  man' s  redemption  was  begun,  that  God 
had  become  man  upon  the  earth.  But  it  was  no  body 
compacted  of  the  air  that  his  God  had  taken  ;  no  mere  ap- 
pearance of  a  human  frame  temporarily  formed  for  the 
occasion  ;  no  body  to  be  afterwards  taken  from  Him  as  an 
unworthy  thing  to  be  redissolved  into  the  elements  from 
which  it  sprung.  And  why?  Because  such  a  course 
would  be  inconsistent  with  the  truthfulness,  the  reality  of 
God.  Wherever  God  immediately  and  personally  acts 
there  must  be  the  quintessence  of  truth  itself  in  its  high- 
est, noblest,  purest,  and  most  potent  form.  When  an 
angel  comes  on  a  mission  of  mercy,  individual  and  tempo- 
rary, he  assumes  the  appearance  (5f  a  man;  when  God 
comes  on  a  mission  of  mercy,  divine,  eternal.  He  becomes 
a  man  indeed.  God  in  very  truth  entered  into  Mary's 
womb.  His  body  was  formed  of  the  blood  of  lier  blood, 
the  flesh  of  her  flesh,  the  bone  of  her  bone.  He  took  a 
real  body  in  that  Virgin's  womb,  formed  of  that  Virgin's 
blood  and  flesh  and  bone.  Into  that  body  as  it  lay  in 
Mary's  womb  He  breathed  a  human,  a  created  soul.  But 
when  that  body  and  soul  were  united  no  human  person- 
ality such  as  you  or  I  possess  arose.     God  said  to  the  hu- 


The  Mystery  of  the  Incarnation,  383 

man  personality,  "Stand  aside."  He  took  that  human 
body  and  that  human  soul,  created  by  His  own  breath  ; 
He  assumed  it  into  His  divine  personality,  and  out  of  this 
mysterious  union  of  a  human  body,  a  human  soul,  and 
God  came  Jesus  Christ,  the  Man-God,  the  Redeemer  of 
mankind,  Mary' s  son — mark  that — Mary' s  son,  as  truly  as 
ever  man  was  son  of  woman  in  human  generation.  Mary's 
son,  her  own  natural  substance,  coming  with  all  the  claim 
of  a  child  upon  its  mother  for  love,  tenderness,  and  mater- 
nal sustenance,  clothing  her  with  all  the  claims  of  a 
mother  on  her  child  for  obedience  and  respect.  Yet  the 
person  that  was  there  was  a  divine  person — was  God.  He 
is  man  indeed,  but  His  personality  is  divine.  A  human 
body  is  formed  in  Mary' s  womb  ;  a  human  soul  is  breatlied 
into  that  body  ;  and  body  and  soul  are  assumed  and  ab- 
sorbed into  the  divine  personality  of  Christ,  the  Second 
Person  of  the  Holy  Trinity,  that  liveth  and  reigneth  for 
ever.  Oh !  how  magnificent,  how  glorious  the  reality  of 
this  incarnation. 

But  is  this  body,  real  as  it  is,  taken  only  for  a  time  ? 
Oh  !  no  ;  it  is  taken  for  ever,  dearly-beloved  brethren — ^for 
ever.  So  long  as  God  shall  reign  in  heaven,  so  long  at  the 
right  hand  of  God,  equal  to  the  Father  in  all  things,  the 
very  figure  of  His  substance,  the  very  splendor  of  his  glory, 
the  God  Man,  Jesus  Christ,  shall  sit.  But  assumed  as  it 
is  for  eternity,  perhaps  it  is  capable  of  temporary  divorce 
from  the  divinity  ?  That  body  was  assumed  for  so  many 
purposes  of  humiliation,  of  sorrow,  and  of  pain  that  we 
can  scarcely  associate  it  continuously  and  eternally  with 
God. 

We  can  scarcely  bring  our  minds  to  conceive  that  God 
is  prepared  in  His  divinity  to  go  down  to  the  lowest 
depths  of  sorrow  and  humiliation  with  the  humanity  of 
Jesus  Christ,  But  such  is  the  reality  of  God  that  He  has 
taken  that  man's  body  and  soul  to  Him  by  a  personal 
union  so  lasting,  so  indissoluble,  so  inseparable,  that  even 
when  the  human  soul  was  parted  from  the  human  body  by 
a  cruel  death — even  then,   while  Christ's  body  hung  a 


384  The  Mtstert  of  the  Incarnation. 

dead  tiling  upon  the  cross,  and  Christ's  soul  went  forth 
Into  that  mysterious  region  where  met  the  anger  and  the 
mercy  of  God  before  the  expiation  of  sin — even  then  the 
Godhead  departed  not  from  the  dead  body  on  the  cross, 
or  from  the  human  soul  in  limbo.  The  Divine  Person,  the 
God  whom  the  angels  adore  and  the  heavens  reverence, 
was  with  that  body  as  it  hung  suspended  'twixt  earth  and 
heaven  on  the  tree  of  shame.  The  Divine  Person  was  stUl 
In  that  body  when  it  was  taken  from  the  cross,  when  it 
was  laid  in  the  dark  tomb  to  whose  mouth  the  great  stone 
was  rolled  round  which  the  Roman  soldiers  watched. 
The  divinity  was  with  the  human  body,  the  divinity  was 
with  the  human  soul,  when  they  met  in  glory  on  Easter 
morning  for  eternity,  never  to  be  separated  again.  The 
divinity  was  never  an  instant  absent  from  the  body  or  the 
soul  from  the  moment  that  human  body,  that  human  soul, 
and  God  became  one  Divine  Person  in  the  womb  of  Mary. 
Oh!  how  different,  beloved,  was  God's  assumption  of 
humanity  from  the  assumptions  that  the  angels  made  from 
time  to  time  of  human  form.  How  easy  was  their  task, 
how  hard  was  His!  There  was  no  pain,  no  sorrow,  no 
humiliation  in  the  task  of  the  angels  that  came  in  human 
form  to  Mary  or  Tobias,  of  the  angels  that  visited  Abraham 
as  he  sat  at  the  door  of  his  tent  in  the  "spring  of  the  day" 
— Scripture's  beautifully  poetic  expression  for  the  early 
morning.  The  patriarch  invited  them  to  his  tent;  they 
partook  of  his  generous  hospitality,  they  performed  the 
mission  with  which  they  were  entrusted,  and  they  depart- 
ed. No  sorrow,  no  humiliation  to  the  angels  who  were 
sent  in  human  form  to  Lot,  to  tell  him  to  fly  from  the  im- 
pure city,  upon  which  the  floodgates  of  God' s  anger  were 
about  to  open.  Their  assumption  of  humanity  was  ap 
parent  and  temporary;  His  was  real  and  eternal.  To 
prove  how  real,  how  substantial,  how  eternal  that  assump- 
tion is  of  our  nature  by  God,  the  belief  in  it  is  made  neces- 
sary for  our  salvation.  It  is  as  great,  as  necessary,  as 
essential  a  truth  to  believe  that  God  is  man  as  to  believe 
that  God  is  God. 


The  Mtstebt  of  the  Incarnation.  385 

And  now,  ray  dearly  beloved,  let  us  apply  this  great 
truth  to  ourselves  ;  for  in  these  our  Christian  meditations, 
while  we  contemplate  the  highest  and  the  most  adorable 
mysteries — the  nature,  the  attributes,  the  life  of  Grod — we 
should  contemplate  them  all  with  a  practical  application  to 
ourselves.  God  became  man,  says  Saint  Augustine,  in 
order  that  man  might  become  as  God.  The  Child  of 
heaven  became  a  child  of  earth,  in  order  that  the  children 
of  earth  might  be  as  the  children  of  'heaven.  He  came  in 
the  reality  and  truth  of  His  divinity  upon  the  earth,  to 
stamp  upon  His  disciples  the  stamp  of  reality  and  truth. 
There  is  no  room  amongst  the  disciples  of  Christ  for  the 
hypocrite  or  the  liar — the  man  that  knows  the  truth  and 
speaks  a  lie — the  man  that  knows  the  truth  and  lives  a  lie. 
There  is  room  amongst  God's  disciples,  there  is  room  in  the 
Church  of  God  for  the  lowliest,  the  vilest,  the  most  abject 
sinner.  For  God  has  likened  His  Church  to  a  net  which  is 
cast  into  the  sea  and  sweeps  up  all  kinds  of  fish,  the  good 
and  bad  together.  The  da}^  of  separation  comes  at  last, 
to  receive  the  good,  to  put  the  bad  away.  But  in  the  net 
which  God  has  cast  for  the  souls  of  men  there  is  room  for 
all  but  the  hypocrite  and  the  liar,  for  all  but  those  who 
condemn,  who  scorn  the  great  lesson  of  truth  and  reality 
tauglit  in  the  Incarnation.  Nay,  such  is  the  power  of 
truth,  of  reality,  that  if  falsehood  itself  be  taken  for  truth 
it  is  no  longer  falsehood  amongst  men.  The  false  man 
knows  the  truth  and  contradicts  it  in  his  words  or  life. 
The  true  man,  the  real  man,  believes  what  is  false  ;  he  has 
been  told  it,  and  he  had  confidence  in  the  word  of  another ; 
his  own  reason  has  led  him  to  an  erroneous  conclusion. 
He  believes  what  is  false  because  he  knows  not  what  is 
true.  He  clings  to  it  because  he  has  no  means  of  ascertain- 
ing its  falsehood,  for  if  he  knew  its  falsehood  he  would 
abandon  it  at  once.  He  is  in  irremediable,  in  invincible 
ignorance ;  but  he  speaks,  he  lives  by  his  belief,  and  in 
the  midst  of  falsehood  his  truthfulness,  his  reality  is 
preserved. 

The  Catholic  Church,  the  Church  of  God,  does  not 


386  The  Mystery  of  tee  I^^carxation, 

say  that  man  is  excluded  from  heaven.  He  may  die  still 
clinging  to  that  invincible  error,  that  error  whose  clouds 
make  falsehood  appear  as  truth  in  his  eyes.  But  there  is 
no  room  in  the  Church  of  God  on  earth  or  in  heaven  for 
the  man  who,  knowing  the  truth,  speaks  or  lives  as  if  he 
knew  it  not,  for  truth,  reality,  and  faith  are  the  only  pass- 
ports to  heaven.  I  would  rather,  dearly -beloved  brethren — 
oh  !  far  rather — take  the  chance  of  salvation  of  the  man 
outside  of  the  Catholic  Church,  the  honest  and  the  truthful 
man,  who  acted  up  to  His  lights,  and  could  get  no  better 
lights  than  those  which  he  possessed,  who  died  indeed  in 
his  ignorance,  but  died  in  his  adherence  to  and  observance 
of  the  principles  of  his  belief,  than  the  chance  of  the 
Catholic  who  knew  the  truth  and  contradicted  it  in  his 
words,  in  his  actions,  in  his  life — who  knew  the  truth  and 
was  ashamed  or  afi-aid  to  confess  it — who  belonged  to  the 
only  body  from  whom  the  truth  can  be  known  and  abused 
the  inestimable  advantage  he  possessed. 

The  only  body  from  which  the  truth  can  be  known — 
speaking  from  this  pulpit,  I  am  bound  by  my  truthfulness 
as  the  accredited  minister  of  God  to  say  it,  I  am  bound 
by  my  responsibility  to  myself  and  my  God — there  is  no 
channel  of  divine  truth,  no  saving  faith  in  God,  outside  the 
ark  of  the  holy  Roman  Catholic  Church.  She  alone  is  the 
ark  of  salvation  to  the  race  of  man.  K  a  man  can  be 
saved  outside  her  folds  by  invincible  ignorance,  by  honesty 
and  sincerity  of  purpose,  by  willingness  to  adopt  the  truth, 
by  strict  adherence  to  the  principles  he  believes  are  true, 
his  salvation  is  exceptional,  abnormal,  accidental.  There 
is  no  ordinary,  normal  accredited  way  to  salvation  save  in 
the  Church  of  God,  of  which  God  Himself  has  said  :  "  Un- 
less a  man  will  hear  the  Church  let  him  be  to  thee  as  the 
he^athen  and  the  publican."  But,  dearly  beloved,  there 
are,  even  in  the  Church  of  God,  many  that  are  thought 
just  but  are  not,  many  that  are  not  real  men,  that  are  not 
thoughtful  men.  Dearly-beloved  brethren,  there  are  many 
who  believe  in  the  Church  of  God,  a\1io  liave  been  bom 
and  baptized  in  her  fold,  or  who,  by  some  extraordinary 


The  Mystery  of  the  Incarxation.  387 

grace — and  it  is  indeed  an  extraordinary  grace — were  called 
from  the  ranks  of  infidelity,  darkness,  and  error  into  the 
admirable  light  of  God.  They  belong  to  God's  holy 
Church,  but  they  seem  actually  ashamed  of  what  should 
be  their  proudest  boast.  If  they  go  out  to  a  dinner-party 
they  are  ashamed  to  do  this — to  make  the  sign  of  the  cross 
—this  glorious  sign  that  in  the  day  of  judgment  shall  shine 
Upon  the  foreheads  of  the  elect  of  God,  that  cross  through 
which  alone,  the  Scripture  tells  us,  the  joy  and  glory  of 
heaven  can  be  obtained.  But  there  are  others  who  are 
fervent,  loud,  blatant  in  their  lip-professions  of  Catholicity, 
who  are  zealous,  furious  in  their  denunciations  of  all  out- 
side the  Church,  even  of  those  whom  the  Church  herself 
absolves.  But  look  at  their  lives.  How  do  they  corre- 
spond with  their  professions  \  Do  they  frequent  the  sac- 
raments of  the  Church  ?  Do  they  approach  the  confes- 
sional ?  Do  you  ever  see  them  partake  of  the  sacred  ban- 
quet cf  the  Holy  Communion  ?  N^o,  my  dearly-beloved 
brethren,  oh  !  no ;  they  are  a  mockery  and  a  triumph  to 
the  heretic  and  the  infidel ;  they  are  a  stumbling-block  to 
the  believer.  They  are  spoken  of  as  the  criminal  classes  ; 
the  debauchee,  the  drunkard,  the  fraudulent  tradesman, 
the  dishonest  servant  are  all  to  be  found  in  these  ranks. 
The  careless,  ignorant,  vicious  Catholics  are  loud  indeed 
in  their  profession  of  Catholicity,  but  careless  of  every  in- 
junction the  Catholic  Church  imposes.  Are  they  truthful, 
are  they  real  in  their  lives,  they  whom  Christ  himself  de- 
scribes as  who  with  their  lips,  indeed,  confess  His  truth, 
but  who  in  every  action  of  their  lives  deny  Him.  My 
dearly-beloved  brethren,  the  very  first  essential  of  the  true 
Catholic,  of  the  true  man,  is  reality. 

Do  you  believe  the  Catholic  faith  ?  The  Church,  un- 
like anything  else  calling  itself  a  religion  on  this  earth, 
puts  the  professors  of  its  doctrines  to  rude  tests.  Do  you 
believe  in  the  Church  ?  If  you  do  you  will  have  to 
starve  yourself  on  the  days  of  fast  which  she  imposes.  You 
will  have  to  submit  to  pain  and  to  humiliation.  Are  you 
a  proud  man  ?   are  you  an  intellectual  man  %    Well,  you 


SS8  The  Mystery  of  the  Ixcarnation. 

will  have  to  go  to  some  poor  priest,  who  perhaps  does  not 
know  half  as  much  as  you.     You  will  have  to  kneel  at  his 
feet,  you  will  have  to  confess  to  him,  you  will  have  to 
speak  to  him  of  things  that  you  would  rather  die,  rather 
commit  suicide,  than  reveal  to  any  other  living  being.     If 
you  be  a  true  man  writhing  in  sorrow  and  humiliation  you 
will  have  to  reveal  to  him  the  darkest  secrets  of  your  soul. 
You  will  have  to  acknowledge  to  him  your  sins,  your  ex- 
cesses, your  baseness,   your  falsehood,   your  dishonesty, 
yourfilthinessof  soul.  These,  my  brethren,  are  indeed  rude 
tests.     Where  there  is  reality  there  must  be  rude  tests. 
Contemplate  the  Eternal  God  born  in  the  stable  ou  Christ- 
mas morning :   His  Mother  hunted  from  house  to  house, 
driven  as  a  last    resource   to  a   stable,    the   Child-God 
brought  forth  amidst  beasts  and  cradled  in  the  straw  of 
their  manger — was  not  this  a  suflBciently  rude  test  of  the 
truth,  the  reality  of  God  as  He  entered  the  world  ?     Con- 
template Him  as  He  leaves  it,  nailed  to  a  cross,  a  hard, 
rough  bed  for  a  dying  man  ;   His  head  lacerated  witli 
thorns  ;  His  body  torn  with  scourges,  His  lips  parched  with 
thirst ;  with  wounded  body  and  broken  heart,  dying  for 
the  sins  of  men  !     These  were  indeed  rude  tests  that  God's 
reality  endured.    He  came  into  the  world  a  man.    He  took 
upon  Himself  the  heritage  of  misery.     He  proved  Himself 
a  true  man,  and  from  the  moment  of  His  birth  to  the  mo- 
ment of  His  death  He  never  shrank  from  agony  or  sorrow. 
Outside  the  Catholic  Church  there  is  no  test  to  which  those 
that  call  themselves  members  of  the  body  must  submit. 
The  Protestant  minister  Ihat  steps  into  the  pulpit  in  the 
trim  black  robes  of  his  ministry  to  preach  the  doctrine  of 
perfection  is  a  married  man  ;  he  has  a  wife  and  children 
of  his  own,  he  has  the  luxuries  and  comforts  that  his  life 
affords,  he  denies  himself  nothing  ;  who  asks  him  to  deny 
himself  ?    But  the  Catholic  priest  must  resist  his  human 
inclinations  and  passions — must  resist  them,  ay,  even  to 
the  letting  of  blood.     He  must,  if  necessary,  lay  bare  his 
own  back  to  the  discipline,  and  cut  the  flesh  and  draw  the 
blood  that  would  rebel.     But  before  he  can  come  into  the 


The  Mystery  of  the  Incarnation.  389 

pulpit,  before  he  can  stand  at  that  altar,  he  must  be  like 
the  angels  of  God  in  his  personal  purity.  Is  not  this  a 
rude  test  ?  The  true  Church  must  impose  rude  tests,  and 
true  men  must  endure  them.  The  Catholic  that  will  not 
submit  to  the  Church's  guidance — the  Catholic  that  is  a 
Mohammedan  or  a  Mormon  in  his  sensuality,  do  not  tell  me 
that  he  has  any  other  claim  or  title  to  the  name  of  Chris- 
tian than  that  baptismal  robe  of  innocence  and  adoption 
which  he  has  not  merely  defiled  but  torn  into  shreds  by 
his  offences.  Veritas  de  terra  orta  est.  It  sprung  forth 
from  the  virgin  earth  of  the  pure  womb  of  Mary  when 
Jesus  Christ,  our  fellow-man,  was  born  into  the  world,  and 
none  can  claim  fellowship  with  Christ  except  by  true  con- 
formity with  the  principles  His  life  and  character  display 
— conformity  not  merely  by  the  words  upon  our  lips,  but 
by  the  actions  of  our  life,  in  all  the  truthfulness  and  reali- 
ty that  are  manifested  to  us  in  this  adorable  mystery  of 
the  Incarnation. 


«♦ 


The  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus. 


The  following  passages  comprise  an  extract  from  a  eerraon  delivered  by 
Fallier  Burke  at  the  laying  of  the  corner-stone  of  the  Church  of  the 
Sacred  Heart,  at  Courtwood,  County  of  Queens,  Ireland.  Bj'  those  who 
love  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus  these  fragments  of  a  beautiful  eermon 
will  be  highly  prized. 

"  I  saw  the  holy  city,  the  New  Jerusalem,  coming  down  out  of  heaven  from 
God,  arrayed  as  a  bride  adorned  for  her  bridegroom,"  words  found  in 
the  twenty-first  chapter  of  the  Apocalypse  of  St.  John. 

MAY  it  please  your  lordship.  Dearly-beloved  brethren, 
^^  we  are  assembled  this  evening  under  the  bishop  and 
pastor  of  our  souls  to  consecrate  and  to  lay  with  prayer 
and  benediction  the  corner-stone  of  this  new  temple  of 
God,  which  is  about  to  be  erected  under  the  title  of  the 
Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus,  an4  as  the  Scrij^tures  tell  us  that 
all  things  in  the  works  of  God  are  harmonious,  and  fit  one 
unto  another,  I  ask  you  to  consider  this  evening  how  fit- 
ting this  church  shall  be  for  the  title  which  it  is  about  to 
receive,  and  I  ask  you  to  consider  what  that  title  means 
— the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus.  "O  Heart!"  exclaims  St. 
Bernard,  "  the  thought  of  Thee  is  balm  to  my  inner  soul ; 
the  sight  of  Thee,  contemplated  by  the  mind,  is  a  joy  to 
mine  eyes,  and  the  sound  of  Thy  name  is  as  the  music  of 
heaven  to  mine  ears";  for,  dearly  beloved,  when  Almighty 
God  vouchsafed  to  become  man,  and  for  us  men  and  for 
our  salvation  vouchsafed  to  be  incarnate  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  and  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  in  that  hour  of  His  great- 
est mercy  He  showed  the  greatness  of  His  love  for  man  in 
that  He  took  to  Him  a  human  heart  like  yours  and  mine 

890 


The  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus.  391 

— a  human  heart  indeed  in  its  capacity  for  joy  and  for 
sorrow — a  heart  most  human  in  the  depths  of  its  sympa- 
thy, its  tenderness,  and  its  love,  but  at  the  same  time  a 
heart  which  was  divine,  and  the  object  of  all  adoration  in 
heaven  and  upon  earth,  and  even  in  hell,  where  the  devils, 
trembling,  still  believe,  because  it  was  the  heart  of  a  divine 
person,  Jesus  Christ,  in  whose  bosom  it  was— the  bosom  of 
God.  But  that  human  heart  which  the  Son  of  God  took 
to  Him  He  took  for  all  the  purposes  for  which  He  creates 
the  hearts  of  ordinary  men,  and  just  as  our  minds  are  made 
to  know,  so  our  hearts  are  created  to  be  receptacles  of  the 
affections  and  to  be  the  home  of  love.  Even  so  when  the 
Son  of  God  took  a  human  body  and  a  human  soul,  that 
Sacred  Heart  of  His  He  took  for  the  purposes  of  loving,  and 
the  heart  of  Jesus  became  the  great  vehicle  and  the  great 
receptacle  of  that  infinite  love  of  the  Father,  Son,  and 
Holy  Ghost  which  was  shown  to  man  in  the  incarnation  of 
the  Eternal  Word. 

And  now  I  ask  you  to  consider  the  words  of  my  text. 
St.  John  the  Evangelist  beheld  with  prophetic  eye  the  glo- 
ries of  the  Church,  which  was  to  be  the  bride  and  lamb  of 
God,  and  he  described  her  as  she  appeared  to  him  in  the 
heavens  coming  down  from  heaven,  from  out  the  very  mind 
and  heart  of  God,  but  coming  all  robed  in  splendor  and 
majesty,  coming  clothed  in  the  very  highest  form  of  loveli- 
ness and  beauty,  like  the  j^oung  bride  of  a  king  arrayed 
and  adorned  to  meet  her  royal  bridegroom.  What  was 
the  beauty  o£  the  Church  of  God  of  which  St.  John  here 
speaks  ?  what  was  the  perfection  of  beauty  of  which  we 
read  almost  in  every  part  of  the  inspired  Scriptures,  God 
at  one  time  saying  to  His  spouse :  "  Thou  art  all  fair,  O 
my  beloved!  and  there  is  no  stain  in  thee"  ;  again  the 
apostle,  proclaiming,  says  :  "  Christ  loved  the  Church  and 
gave  Himself  for  her,  that  He  might  present  her  to  Himself 
without  spot  or  wrinkle  or  any  such  thing,  but  a  glorious 
Church,  j)erfect  and  worthy  to  be  the  bride  of  the  Lamb  of 
God"  ?  What  is  the  beauty  which  belongs  to  the  Lamb 
of  God  ?    It  is,  my  beloved,  none  other  than  the  beauty  of 


393  The  Sacred  Heart  of  J^us. 

Crod  Himself.  Thus  saith  the  Lord :  "  Thou  wast  made  ex- 
ceeding beautiful  because  of  my  own  beauty  wliich  I  have 
given  to  thee,  saith  the  Lord  thy  God  on  Zion."  .^his 
church,  rising  here  amongst  these  historic  plains,  will-, 
fling  up  towards  heaven  the  loveliness  of  pointed  arch  and 
wall,  tmceried  window,  and  a  spire  climbing  with  a  holy 
ambition  high  into  the  clouds,  until  the  setting  sun  of  the 
world's  Redeemer — the  cross  of  Jesus  Christ— shall  be 
flung  broad  and  wide  over  many  a  road  around,  until  that 
gilded  cross  shall  catch  the  first  rays  of  the  sun  rising  in 
the  morning  in  the  east,  and  shall  be  the  last  object  to  re- 
ceive the  adoring  rays  of  the  same  luminary  as  he  sinks  in 
the  western  horizon  in  the  evening — a  "thing  of  beauty 
and  a  joy  for  ever"  to  every  eye  that  beholds  and  every 
heart  that  comprehends  the  mystery  of  its  beauty.  What 
shall  be  the  beauty  of  this  church  ?  How  shall  it  partici- 
pate in  the  loveliness  which  wUl  make  it  to  be  as  a  bride 
arrayed  for  her  bridegroom  ?  I  answer.  Its  beauties  are 
intimated  in  its  title — the  Church  of  the  Sacred  Heart  of 
Jesus.  Consider  the  beauty  and  loveliness  of  the  Sacred 
Heart  of  our  Lord,  and  see  how  faithfully  that  beauty 
which  is  of  God  shall  be  put  upon  this  church.  His  spouse. 
One  of  the  great  wants  of  our  age  is  not  so  much  faith  as 
tenderness  and  love  for  Jesus  Christ. 

Oh !  is  it  not  strange  that  Catholic  hearts  should  be 
cold  towards  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus,  whilst  the  heart  of 
the  Church  their  mother  ever  burns  with  the  fresh  bridal 
love  for  the  Sacred  Heart  of  her  Bridegroom  ?  Is  it  not  still 
stranger  that  many  outside  the  Catholic  Church  should 
imagine  that  we  Catholics  have  not  a  proper,  or  sufiiciently 
ardent,  or  sufficiently  adoring  love  for  the  Sacred  Heart  of 
Jesus  Christ  ?  Oh  I  how  little  they  know  the  thoughts  of 
our  faith — how  little  they  know  the  yearnings  of  our  hope, 
the  strong  emotions  of  our  Catholic  charity,  else  in  their 
honesty,  in  their  kindliness,  they  would  never  think  such 
a  thought  of  us  or  speak  such  a  word.  Most  beautiful  of 
all  tliat  ever  was  created  in  heaven  or  upon  this  earth — 
beautiful  of  all  the  works  of  God  is  the  Sacred  Heart 


The  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus.  393 

of  Jesus  Christ,  and  its  beauty  is  mainly  threefold.  First, . 
the  beauty  of  His  infinite  holiness  ;  second,  the  beauty  of 
His  yast  tenderness  and  large  bounty,  which  knew  no  limit 
to  the  greatness  of  His  mercy;  and  third,  the  beauty  of 
His  immortal,  imperishable,  eternal  divinity,  reigning  in 
the  Sacred  Heart  of  the  Redeemer.  I  take  these  three,  and 
ask  you  to  consider  them,  first  in  the  sacred  humanity  of 
the  Sacred  Heart  of  our  Lord,  then  we  will  apply  them  to 
this  very  church  within  whose  incipient  walls  we  are  as- 
sembled this  evening.  First  of  all,  the  heart  of  Jesus 
Christ,  the  Virgin's  Son,  was  the  most  beautiful  thing  that 
God  ever  made,  because  it  was  the  holiest.  Formed  out  of 
the  most  pure,  the  most  immaculate  materials,  elaborated 
with  the  most  thoughtful  care  of  the  mind  of  God,  and 
joined  by  a  personal  union  with  the  eternal  divinity  of 
the  Word,  that  heart  of  the  Man-God  had  become  the 
heart  of  God  Himself  in  Jesus  Christ.  How  pure  and  holy 
that  sweet  heart  of  Jesus  was  I  formed  out  of  the  blood  of 
Mary  the  Blessed  Virgin— Mary,  the  Virgin  of  whom  it 
■was  said,  under  the  inspiration  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  that  it 
was  one  of  the  privileges  of  humanity  to  be  able  through 
all  generations  to  call  her  blessed— Mary,  the  Virgin  whose 
graces  were  so  abundant  and  so  excellent  and  so  unique  in 
themselves  that  the  very  archangel  who  came  down  from 
before  the  throne  of  God  bowed  down  before  her  as  one  of 
an  order  of  grace  superior  to  his,  and  declared  that  she  was 
"  full  of  grace,"  and  that  her  name  was  blessed  among  all 
women,  for  the  Lord  God  was  with  her.  That  sacred  blood 
that  was  in  the  Virgin's  veins  was  preserved  from  the 
slightest  shadow  or  thought  to  sin  allied.  Where  all  sin- 
ned Mary  alone  was  immaculate.  Enshrined  in  the  omni- 
potent and  eternal  decrees  of  the  Lord  God,  her  Maker, 
the  ocean  of  original  sin,  surging  up  like  the  flood  of  old, 
and  sweeping  over  the  whole  face  of  human  creation, 
touched  all,  defiled  all,  spoiled  all,  but  God  said  to  its 
waves  at  their  very  highest :  "  Touch  not  my  immaculate 
one — she  is  my  love,  my  star,  and  my  dove,  and  there  is 
no  spot  nor  stain  in  her."     Why  did  Mary  receive  this 


394  The  Sa^med  HUSlrt  of  Jesus. 

^race  ?  **Iii  order  that  the  veins  of  her  bosom,  unstained 
and  unsullied  by  the  slightest  shaded'  of  sin,  might  be 
worthy  to  give  the  materials  of  that  human  but  most  sacred 
heart  of  Jesus  Ohristr,  which  was'  for  ever  a  living^jhalice  of- 
the  Precious  Blood.  Thus,  pure  in  it.^  origin,  God  made 
for  Himself  out  of  Mary's  blood  a  human  heart,  so  large, 
so  simple,  so  strong  as  to  be  able  to  bear  the  rushing  floods 
of  the  infinite  sanctity  of  God  that  came  upon  Him.'  For 
that  heart  was  united  in  the  sacred  humanity  of  our  Lord 
to  the  divinity,  so  that  the  result  of  the  union  was  not  a 
human  person  but  a  divine  person,  and  the  heart  that  was 
throbbing  in  the  besom  of  Jesus  Christ  was  the  heart  of 
God.  Secondly,  consider  how  unique  in  its  beauty  was 
this  Sacred  Heart  of  God.  All  other  men  had  hearts  nar- 
rowed by  selfishness,  defiled  in  some  way  or  other  by  sin. 
Mary  herself,  though  immaculate,  had  yet  incurred  the 
debt  of  original  sin,  and  was  as  much  saved,  and  as  truly, 
though  differently,  by  the  blood  and  passion  of  her  divine 
Master  as  your  or  my  soul.  But  even  the  man  after  God's 
own  heart,  even  the  royal  prophet,  left  behind  him  the 
record  of  a  heart  open  to  temptation — a  heart  easily  in- 
flamed by  impure  love.  Jesus  alone  of  all  men  had  a  heart 
of  infinite  holiness,  but  to  that  holiness  was  added  the 
other  beauty  of  infinite  tenderness  and  largeness  of  mercy. 
He  took  that  human  heart  to  Him  for  the  same  purpose  of 
loving  his  fellow- men,  and  loving  them  -with  all  that  migh- 
ty heart.  What  were  the  wants  that  that  Sacred  Heart 
of  His  failed  to  feel  ?  Were  tlie  people  hungering  around 
Him,  He  spoke  to  His  apostles  and  said:  "I  have  com- 
passion on  this  multitude  ;  my  heart  is  moved  for  them ; 
and  I  will  not  send  them  awaj^  fasting."  Were  the  people 
ignoi-ant.  He  went  out  and  led  them  out  to  the  mountain, 
and  for  three  days  and  three  nights  there  did  He  speak 
and  teach  till  the  clouds  of  ignorance  rolled  away  from  the 
eyes  of  their  souls,  and  from  the  darkness  of  their  ignor- 
ance He  brought  them,  through  th(;  compassion  of  His  di- 
vine heart,  into  His  own  admirable  liglit  of  knowledge. 
We^  they  sorrowing,  He  hastened  to  wipe  away  their  tears. 


The  Sacred  IJeart  of  Jesus.  395 

It  is  now  a  sister  weeping,  or  a  brother' s  gri^L    Teard 
are  falling  over  tke  grave  of  Lazarus,  and  he  is  rescued 
from  the  very  Jaws  of  death.     Is  it  a  weeping  mother  as 
i.  -tshe  follows  her  only  son  to  the  gr^-ve  ?     Seeing  her,  as 

St.  John  the  Evangelist  says,  He  was  touched,  and  moved, 
and  shaken  with  pity.  Weep  no  more,  He  said,  and  He 
gave  back  with  His  own  sweet  hand  that  child  to  its 
mother's  bosom.  Is  it  the  sinner  crawling  to  His  feet, 
heart-broken  with  sorrow — a  sinner  whom  all  men  will 
avoid,  a  sinner  so  despised  that  even  the  priest  and  Levite, 
Scribe  and  Pharisee  gather  their  robes  and  say :  "Begone, 
touch  us  not ;  we  are  clean."  One  only  could  she  come  to, 
and  from  Him  she  derived  the  sanctity  of  heaven  by  her 
repentance.  Did  He  refuse  her  when  Magdalen  crept, 
^  marking  her  humble  course  by  her  tears  ?    Oh  !  no  ;   His 

^^  divine  heart  was  moved  by  compassion,  and  when  she 
arose  from  His  sacred  feet  she  was  pure  as  the  Angel 
Gabriel  was  when  he  saluted  Mary.  Nay,  more,  the  sinner 
not  drawn  to  Him  in  repentance,  but  caught  red-handed  in 
her  sin,  was  not  condemned  by  Him,  but  rather  she  went 
away  like  an  angel  of  God  in  her  restored  contrition.  In 
fact,  every  spiritual  and  temporal  want  found  its  safety  in 
drawing  upon  the  infinite  fountain  of  the  mercy  and  ten- 
derness of  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  moment 
that  our  Lord  fashioned  and  formed  that  Sacred  Heart  for 
Himself  out  of  the  heart's  blood  of  His  Virgin  Mother, 
from  the  moment  He  took  it  to  Himself,  never  for  one 
instant  of  time  did  the  Son  of  God  separate  Himself  from 
that  heart.  Never  for  an  instant  did  His  all-holy  and 
adorable  divinity — never  for  all  eternity  shall  the  heart  of 
Jesus  Christ,  be  without  the  love  of  God  throbbing  with  a 
divine  love  in  it.  Even  when  He  was  dead  on  the  cross — 
even  when  the  Sacred  Heart,  so  easily  moved,  so  abundant 
in  its  care,  so  tender  and  anxious  in  its  own  mercy — wheni 
the  Sacred  Heart,  so  forgiving  that,  with  upturned  eyes, 
He  prayed  to  His  Eternal  Father  in  heaven  that  those  who 
crucified  Him  might  be  forgiven — even  when  the  sweet 
heart  ceased  to    beat  and  was  dead — even  though   the 


396  The  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus,  ■ 

human  soul  had  fled,  the  divinity  of  God  never  left  it,  and 
the  angels  in  heaven  were  adoring  this  pulseless  heart  of 
Jesus  Christ  during  the  hour  he  remained  on  the  cross. 
Behold,  then,  the  three  beauties  of  the  Sacred  Heart. 

Behold  these  wails  to-day.  Tlie  corner-stone  is  laid  in 
prayer  and  benediction,  and  within  these  walls  shall 
rise  up  prayer  and  benediction  for  all  time.  Everything 
around  these  walls  in  future  shall  be  the  most  precious 
that  the  mind  of  man  can  conceive,  the  ingenuity  of  man 
discover,  the  elaborate  cunning  of  the  artificer' s  hand  form 
into  shape  and  beauty.  All  the  richest  marbles  torn  out 
from  the  heart  of  the  earth,  gold  and  silver,  orient  pearls, 
the  fairest  flowers  of  the  earth,  the  labor  of  the  mother 
bee ;  all  that  the  earth  has,  all  that  the  depths  of  the  sea 
can  render,  all  that  the  hills  contain,  all  that  the  green 
face  of  nature  can  produce,  shall  be  selected  and  gathered 
here  ;  and  when  we  have  done  all  this,  and  more,  yet  shall 
we  fail  infinitely  from  the  beauty  and  loveliness  of  the 
house  in  wliich  God  vouchsafed  to  dwell.  These  walls 
shall  be  eloquent  as  they  resound  to  the  Word  of  God  for 
many  a  day,  and  within  them  will  be  found  the  same 
mercy,  the  same  powerful  means  of  intercession,  the  same 
ready  pardon,  the  same  strong  omnipotent  grace  of  absolu- 
tion that  Magdalen  received  at  the  feet  of  Jesus  Christ 
from  His  Sacred  Heart.  All  shall  be  found  within  these 
walls,  and  the  three-fold  beauty  of  that  Sacred  Heart  shall 
not  be  wanting.  It  was  an  eternal  heart  from  the  moment 
of  its  creation,  taken  unto  God,  assumed  unto  the  Divinity 
to  be  no  longer  the  heart  of  man,  but  to  be  the  heart  of 
God,  and  to  abide  there  for  ever  and  ever.  Even  so  these 
walls  shall  abide  for  ever  and  ever.  As  long  as  man  re- 
mains on  earth  to  cross  the  threshold  of  that  sacred  door 
80  long  shall  that  door  remain  open  to  liira.  These  waUs 
may,  indeed,  perish ;  time  in  its  relentless  action,  the 
malice  of  men,  and  the  thousand  accidents  of  flood  and  of 
storm  may  demolish  them  ;  but  these  walls  will  arise  again 
as  the  fabled  bird  arose  from  its  ashes— they  shall  arise 
again  as  they  are  arising  to-day  where  the  more  ancient 


The  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus.  397 

walls  perished,  or,  if  they  still  remain,  are  only  supported 
by  the  loving  ivy  that  first  trained  itself  around  them. 
Venerable  and  beautiful  in  their  ruin  we  see  them  through- 
out the  land,  these  evidences  not  of  a  faith  that  has  gone 
by  but  only  evidences  of  the  action  of  time  and  of  man, 
renewed  as  the  strength  of  the  eagle  is  renewed  in  build- 
ings like  this.  Monuments  of  the  faith  shall  never  perish 
on  this  earth  as  long  as  human  intellect  remains  to  believe 
and  human  hearts  to  love  Jesus  Christ.  Therefore  we 
may  well  apply  to  this  temple  the  words  :  This  is  my  rest- 
ing place,  said  the  Lord,  for  ever  and  ever.  Here  shall  I 
dwell,  because  I  have  chosen  it  for  myself.  You  see  the 
Lord  has  chosen  this  place.  God  was  looking  down  from 
heaven  upon  this  very  spot,  and  said,  There  shall  I  dwell 
for  ever  and  ever,  there  shall  I  dwell  among  the  children  of 
mine,  for  I  have  chosen  that  spot.  We  know  it  to-day, 
and  we  shall  know  it  better  when,  still  more  generous  in 
our  efforts,  still  more  munificent  in  our  charity,  we  shall 
have  it  completed  and  beautified.  Entering  with  joy,  ac- 
cording to  the  words  of  the  Psalmist,  into  the  courts  of  the 
New  Jerusalem,  we  shall  here  upon  the  altar  on  the  day  of 
the  consummation  of  its  beauty  behold  the  tabernacle  of 
God,  and  He  shall  here  dwell  with  them,  and  they  shall  be 
His  people,  and  the  Lord  God  in  the  midst  of  them  shall 
be  their  God,  This  is  the  object  of  our  hope  to-day.  Our 
faith  has  begun  the  work,  our  hope  shall  continue  it,  our 
love  for  our  God  shall  consummate  it  and  make  it  perfect 
in  all  its  loveliness  and  beauty,  and  with  God's  blessing 
great  shall  be  the  reward  in  heaven  for  all  eternity. 


The  Altar  of  the  Sacred  Heart, 


This  magnificent  sermon  was  delivered  at  the  dedication  of  the  new  altar 
of  the  S'lcred  Heart  in  the  Augustinian  Church  of  SS.  Augustine  and 
Paul,  Dublin,  November  3, 1876.  It  is  wortliy  of  a  place  among  the 
most  excellent  sermons,  and  can  be  rend  with  profit  and  pleasure. 

"  How  beautiful  are  Thy  tabernacles,  O  Lord — Thine  altars,  O  Lord  of 
hosts !" 

THESE  words  are  taken  from  the  eighty-third  Psalm. 
Assembled  as  we  are  to-day  to  assist  at  tlie  consecra- 
tion and  solemn  dedication  of  an  altar  of  a  Catholic  church 
and  that  altar  crowned  with  the  image  of  our  Divine 
Lord  and  Saviour,  and  dedicated  to  Him  under  the  title  of 
His  own  most  Sacred  Heart,  our  thoughts,  dearly  beloved, 
naturally  turn  to  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus  Christ.  To 
the  subject  of  the  altar,  for,  as  the  apostle  pithily  and  for- 
cibly expresses  it,  "  Habemus  altar e'''' — we  have  an  altar — 
not  merely  a  place  of  prayer,  not  merely  a  table  whereon 
to  commemorate  in  a  shadowy  and  most  inefficient  manner 
the  recollection  of  the  greatest  act  that  ever  took  place  upon 
this  earth,  but  a  true  and  real  altar  of  sacrifice,  solemnly 
consecrated  with  the  outpouring  of  oil  and  the  voice  of 
prayer — an  altar  on  which  the  blood  of  a  victim  flows  in 
real  sacrifice,  an  altar  before  which  an  accredited  and  an- 
ointing priest,  sacrificing,  takes  his  stand — an  altar  where- 
on is  consummated  the  highest  and  the  great  central 
mystery  of  our  religion — an  altar,  therefore,  of  all  places 
on  this  earth  the  most  holy  and  the  most  solemn — an  altar 
of  the  holy  Catholic  Church.    And,  dearly  beloved,  when 

88B 


The  Altjle  of  the  Sacred  Heart.  399 

we  come  to  consider  this  subject  we  are  forcibly  reminded 
of  the  intimate  and  essential  connection  that  exists  between 
the  altiir  and  the  idea  of  sacrilice.  "For,"  says  the  great 
Saint  Augustine,  "never  have  any  body  of  men  assembled 
in  the  name  of  religion  who  did  not  embody  their  homage 
and  their  adoration  of  God  in  the  form  of  sacrifice."  Sac- 
rifice enters  naturally  into  the  idea  of  homage,  for  the  mo- 
ment that  man  puts  himself  in  spirit  in  the  presence  of 
the  Almighty  Creator,  the  moment  he  acknowledges  his 
own  unworthiness  and  his  own  debt,  and  desires  to  testify 
to  that  unworthiness  and  in  some  manner,  no  matter  how 
inefficiently,  to  pay  that  debt,  that  moment  the  idea  that 
necessarily  comes  to  liis  mind  is  the  idea  of  immolation  or 
sacrifice.  He  wishes  to  express  his  conception  of  the 
greatness  of  that  God  who  is  enthroned  aloft  before  him, 
and  in  whose  hands  are  life  and  death  ;  he  takes  a  victim 
and  he  sheds  blood,  thereby  attesting  that  all  things 
belong  to  God  ;  he  conceives  his  own  sinfulness  and  his 
own  unworthiness,  and  he  wishes  to  put  himself  as  a  sup- 
pliant before  the  Almighty  God,  and  to  testify  to  God  the 
great  idea  that  suffering  must  necessarily  atone  for  sin  ; 
therefore  he  takes  to  him  a  victim,  if  innocent  so  much 
the  better,  and  sheds  the  blood  of  that  victim  in  testimony 
to  these  great  ideas  that  fill  his  mind.  Hence  it  was,  and 
is,  even  amongst  the'most  barbarous  nations,  that  an  idea 
of  sacrifice,  no  matter  how  faint  or  shadowy  it  may  be,  is 
almost  invariably  found  ;  and  the  Lord  God  Himself  from 
the  beginning,  from  the  day  that  man  sinned  and  incurred 
the  debt  of  sin  and  the  obligation  of  reparation,  the 
Almighty  God,  I  say,  enjoined  upon  him  the  natural  as 
well  as  the  legal  obligation  of  sacrifice.  Therefore  it  is 
that  we  find  the  children  of  our  first  parents  collecting, 
one  tlie  first-fruits  of  the  earth,  the  other  taking  the 
firstlings  of  his  flock,  and  offering  them  to  the  Lord  God. 
Therefore  when  Noe  came  forth  from  the  ark  his  very 
first  act  of  gratitude  and  of  adoration  to  the  Lord  God, 
who  had  saved  him  out  of  the  wreck  and  ruin  of  the 
world,  which  had  perished,  was  to  erect  an  altar  and  offer 


400  The  Altab  of  the  Sacred  Heart. 

a  sacrifice  of  living  victims  to  the  Lord.  Therefore  the 
patriarch  who  lay  down  at  Bethel,  with  a  stone  for  his 
pillow,  and  in  the  darkness  of  the  night  beheld  the  vision 
of  angels,  and  rose  trembling  with  fear  in  the  morning, 
and  saying:  "Truly  this  spot  is  holy,  for  it  is  no  other 
than  the  house  of  God  and  the  gate  of  heaven,"  imme- 
diately gave  vent  to  his  feelings  and  testified  to  the  holi- 
ness both  of  God  and  the  place  whereupon  he  had  lain 
down  by  building  up  an  altar,  pouring  oil  upon  it,  and 
then  offering  sacrifice  to  the  Lord  God.  And  when  the 
people  came  forth  from  Egypt,  and  God  gave  them  their 
laws,  He  again  enjoined  legally  and  specifically  the  obli- 
gation as  well  as  defined  the  manner  and  the  matter  of 
sacrifice — sacrifice  for  sin,  sacrifice  for  every  form  of  legal 
uncleanliness,  sacrifice  of  victims  and  first-fruits  in  grati- 
tude, and  sacrifice  to  obtain  mercies  and  graces  in  the  time 
to  come  ;  and  hence,  dearly  beloved,  a  whole  book  of  the 
sacred  writings  is  occupied  witli  defining  and  specifying 
the  manner  and  matter  of  these  sacrifices.  Therefore  the 
Almighty  and  Eternal  God,  before  whom  not  time  only 
but  the  infinite  eternity  is  present  as  one  point,  and  who 
sees  all  things,  the  past,  the  present,  and  the  future,  im- 
mediately under  His  own  all-seeing  eyes,  determined  that 
all  these  sacrifices  of  the  olden  law  were  merely  as  so 
many  shadows  of  the  great  sacrifice  which  was  to  come, 
and  as  so  many  reminders  to  His  people  of  the  Victim  that 
He  was  one  day  to  provide  in  heaven  and  to  send  on  earth, 
whose  immolation  was  to  be  the  redemption  of  all  man- 
kind. Therefore  it  was  that  all  tilings,  said  the  apostle, 
were  shut  up  in  figures  and  in  mere  significance  and  pro- 
mise in  the  Old  Law;  for,  says  the  apostle,  "without  the 
shedding  of  blood  there  was  to  be  no  remission." 

The  blood  that  was  shed  from  the  beginning  of  the  inno 
cent  victims  of  the  flock  was  but  a  type  of  the  sacred  blood 
of  the  innocent  Son  of  God,  which  was  to  be  poured  out 
upon  this  earth  for  the  sins  of  all  mankind.  And,  dearly 
beloved,  striking,  indeed,  and  vivid  were  those  images  of 
the  future  great  sacrifice.     The  innocent  lamb  is  taken  out 


Tee  Altar  of  the  Sacred  Heart.  401 

of  the  flock,  and  its  sinless  blood  is  poured  out,  and  is 
sprinkled  upon  the  people,  and  signed  upon  the  lintels  of 
their  doorways,  and  lo !  the  angel  of  God  sent  forth  on 
that  terrible  night  upon  his  awful  mission  of  divine  ven- 
geance is  stayed,  and  he  respects  the  blood  of  the  paschal 
lamb,  and  passes  by,  and  neither  wailing,  nor  weeping, 
nor  tears  are  seen  in  the  houses  of  God's  chosen.  The 
little  child,  on  the  eighth  day  after  his  birth,  sheds  per- 
sonally innocent  blood,  and  in  the  shedding  of  that  blood 
obtains  the  remission  of  original  sin  in  circumcision.  Oh  ! 
what  were  all  these  things  but  figures  and  the  foreshadow- 
ing of  that  sacrifice  which  took  place  in  the  fulness  of  time, 
when  He  who  was  eternal,  the  eternal  Word  of  the  Father, 
co-eternal,  consubstantial,  co-existent  with  the  Almighty 
and  Eternal  Father,  begotten  indeed,  but  begotten  of  all 
eternity,  was  incarnate  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  of  the 
Virgin  Mary.  He  came  into  this  world  and  was  made 
man.  He  took  a  human  body  and  a  human  soul  in  all  the 
fulness  and  reality  of  our  human  nature — took  a  human 
heart  and  fed  it  with  human  blood,  took  every  member  of 
our  body,  so  that  He  was  Jiabitu /actus  ut  homo.  He  was 
made  in  body  and  form  as  a  man,  true  man  as  He  was  true 
God  ;  true  man  in  all,  yet  not  a  human  person,  but  a  divine. 
I  insist  upon  it  in  the  name  of  Christianity,  in  the  name  of 
truth,  and  in  the  name  of  the  Eternal  God,  who  did  this 
for  our  salvation.  I  fling  out  as  an  answer  to  all  the 
blasphemous  assertions  of  our  day,  that  Christ  our  Lord 
was  true  God  and  true  man,  and  the  manhood  in  Him  was 
assumed  into  a  divine  personality.  He  was  only  one  per- 
son, as  I  am  only  one  person,  but  that  person  in  Him  was 
divine,  and  Mary,  the  Mother  of  that  person,  was  the  Mo- 
ther of  God.  And  any  man.  who  asserts  that  she  was  not 
the  Mother  of  God,  but  only  the  mother  of  Jesus  Christ, 
is  a  blasphemer  against  the  hypostatic  union  by  which  the 
two  natures  were  united  in  one  person  ;  he  has  not  taken 
in  the  very  faintest  conception  of  the  divine  mystery  upon 
which  all  Christianity  is  built  up — that  God  became  man, 
and  that  God  and  man  were  united  in  the  one  person — not 


402  The  Altar  of  the  Sacred  Heart. 

a  human  person,  but  a  divine.  Why  did  He  who  was  God 
take  a  human  body,  take  a  human  heart,  throbbing  with 
the  pulsations  of  human  blood  ?  Why  did  He  take  out  of 
the  stainless  and  immaculate  veins  of  Mary  that  blood  ? 
Why  did  he  take  flesh  that  suffered  and  writhed  under  the 
lash  when  that  lash  fell  upon  Him  ?  Why  did  He  take 
that  sacred  head  which  was  pierced  with  thorns?  O 
dearly  beloved !  it  was  not  for  joy,  it  was  not  for  feasting, 
it  was  not  for  gladness  that  He  came.  He  took  our 
humanity,  that  in  that  humanity  He  might  suffer  and  die 
— offer  Himself  to  His  Eternal  Father  a  bleeding,  torn,  dy- 
ing victim,  and  pour  out  every  drop  of  the  blood  that  cir- 
culated in  His  Sacred  Heart,  and  wipe  out  the  handwriting 
of  that  decree  that  was  registered  against  men,  and  make 
Himself  the  Lamb  of  God  who  takes  away  the  sins  of  all 
manldnd.  He  came  therefore  for  sacrifice.  Now,  sacrifice 
involves  three  things.  First  of  all  it  involves  a  victim  to 
be  immolated  ;  secondly,  it  involves  a  priest  who  is  to  im- 
molate the  victim  ;  thirdly,  it  involves  an  altar  upon  which 
the  victim  is  laid.  Thus  it  was  when  God  commanded 
Abraham  to  take  his  only  and  best  beloved  child  Isaac  and 
to  go  forth  ;  He  told  him  at  the  same  time  to  take  the  wood 
for  the  altar,  to  be  himself  the  priest,  and  in  Isaac  He  pro- 
vided the  victim.  When  in  His  mercy  He  sent  His  angel 
to  stay  the  father' s  hand  then  did  He  find  another  victim, 
the  altar  and  the  priest  remaining  the  same.  And  so  when 
the  central  hour,  towards  which  all  things,  from  the  eter- 
nity of  the  past  and  from  the  eternity  of  the  future,  looked 
— wlien  the  great  hour  came,  the  central  hour  in  all  the  de- 
signs of  God,  in  all  the  hopes  of  man,  when  that  hour  had 
arrived  the  altar  was  provided  upon  the  hill  of  Calvary  ; 
that  altar  was  the  cross,  which  waited,  with  its  outstretched 
arms,  for  the  victim  to  be  laid  upon  it.  The  victim  was 
provided — that  victim  was  the  Son  of  God,  the  Eternal 
God  made  man,  the  child  of  Mary.  And  the  priest  was 
there,  who  was  no  other  than  Jesus  Christ,  offering  and 
immolating  HimseK  to  be  the  victim  for  the  sins  of  man- 
kind. 


The  Altar  of  the  S acred  Heart.  403 

And,  dearly  beloved,  when  that  last  loud  cry  went  forth 
from  His  dying  lips,  when  the  last  drop  of  His  precious 
blood,  necessary  for  redemption,  was  shed,  when  the 
meek,  thorn-crowned  head  bowed  down  in  death  and  the 
spirit,  the  great  spirit  of  our  Lord,  went  forth  from  Him, 
then,  in  that  instant,  all  the  sacrifices  that  foreshadowed 
Him  in  the  past  were  fulfilled,  all  necessity  of  future 
sacrifices  were  completely  abolished,  for  the  one  great, 
perfect  sacrifice  was  made,  the  one  great  purpose  of  re- 
demption was  achieved.  The  altar  bore  indeed  still  the 
Victim  dead — yet,  though  dead,  still  God.  For  although 
the  human  soul  was  separated  from  the  human  body,  the 
divinity  that  dwelt  in  Him  corporally  was  never  for  an  in- 
stant separated  from  either  the  one  or  the  other.  Christ 
our  Lord,  dearly  beloved,  might,  if  He  so  willed  it,  have 
left  no  trace  of  Himself  upon  the  earth  save  in  the  truth 
of  the  Church's  teaching,  and  perhaps  in  some  striking 
and  pious  commemoration  of  His  death.  But  because  He 
was  God,  because  all  things  in  Him  are  real  and  substan- 
tial, because  in  God  there  is  no  mere  shadow  without  sub- 
stance, no  mere  words  without  the  essential  truth  which  it 
expresses — as,  for  instance,  in  the  procession  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  the  love  of  the  Father  for  the  Son,  and  of  the  Son  for 
the  Father,  taking  a  substantial  form,  there  is  the  Third 
Person  of  the  Blessed  Trinity — so  also  when  Christ  our 
Lord,  impelled  by  His  infinite  love,  determined  to  perpetu- 
ate unto  the  end  of  time  the  commemoration  of  the  great 
sacrifice  which  He  made  upon  Calvary,  assuming  to  Him 
all  the  reality  of  His  Omnipotent  Godhead,  He  established 
that  commemoration  in  a  continuation  of  the  sacrifice  it- 
self— no  mere  form,  no  mere  commemorative  exhibition  of 
the  death  of  the  Lord,  no  mere  form  of  words  telling  the 
people  of  the  love  of  Him  who  suffered  and  died  for  them, 
no  mere  feasting,  recalling  to  their  minds  the  recollection 
of  the  wonderful  supper  in  the  upper  chamber  at  Jerusa- 
lem ;  no,  but  the  self-same  sacrifice,  perpetuated  and  con- 
tinued, the  same  Victim,  the  same  Priest,  and  all  but  the 
same  altar. 


404  Tee  Altar  of  the  Sacred  Heart. 

The  manner,  indeed,  if  you  will,  of  sacrifice  is  changed  ; 
it  is  no  longer  the  forciblt^,  visible,  material  shedding  of 
blood  ;  it  is  no  longer  the  violent  tearing  of  soul  from  body 
in  that  terrible  death  as  on  the  cross  ;  it  is  no  longer  the 
drooping  head,   the  scourged  body,   the  breaking  heart, 
slowly  fainting  away  before  the  approach  of  the  Angel  of 
Death  ;  no,  but  the  body  and  the  blood  of  the  Lord  are 
there,  but  the  body  and  the  blood  are  mystically  separat- 
ed, and  the  body  and  the  blood  that  were  offered  on  Cal- 
vary are  offered  again  and  again,  the  same  Victim  and  the 
same  Priest  and  all  but  the  same  altar.     The  same  Victim ; 
for  the  night  before  He  suffered  He  took  the  bread  into 
His  holy  and  venerable  hands,  and  He  put  the  chalice  with 
the  wine  before  Him,  and  He  said  to  His  apostles  :   "  Re- 
member that  I  have  told  you  again  and  again  that  without 
me  you  can  do  nothing  {sine  me  nihil  potestls  facer e). 
Remember  I  have  told  you  again  and  again  that  you  must 
abide  in  me,  and  I  in  you,  if  you  must  be  saved.     Remem- 
ber that  I  have  told  you  again  and  again  that  you  must  be 
united  to  me  as  I  am  united  to  my  Eternal  Father.     Re- 
member that  I  have  told  you  again  what  the  manner  of  that 
union  is  to  be — that  you  must  eat  of  my  flesh  and  drink  of 
my  blood  if  you  would  have  life  in  you ;  that  all  your 
hopes  in  a  future  resurrection  are  bound  up  in  that  eating 
of  flesh  and  drinking  of  my  blood.     '  He  that  abideth  in  me 
I  will  raise  him  up  at  the  last  day.'    Now  that  the  mo- 
ment is  come,  behold  the  means  of  union  which  I  am  about 
to  put  into  your  hands.    This  bread  that  I  hold  in  my  hand 
is  my  body."   And  then,  taking  the  chalice,  He  said :  "This 
is  my  blood  that  shall  be  shed  for  tlie  redemption  of  the 
world."     Peter,  James,  and  John,  and  the  others,  looked 
on  with  anxious  eyes  and  beating  hearts  when  they  heard 
these  awful  words  of  their  Divine  Lord  and  Master.     They, 
perhaps,  in  their  ignorance  expected  to  see  a  startling 
miracle  before  their  eyes,  but  no  apparent  miracle  took 
place.    He  held  aloft  that  which  He  described  to  be  His 
own  body,  and  the' eyes  of  tlie  apostles  saw  nothing  but 
what  appeared  to  be  bread.     He  put  the  love  and  admira- 


The  Altar  of  the  Sacred  Heart.  405 

tion  that  was  centred  around  this  mystery  entirely  upon 
their  trust  in  His  truthfulness — the  argument  of  things 
that  do  not  appear — and  they  bowed  down  and  adored  it. 
Oh  !  what  awe,  and  at  the  same  time  what  love  and  grati- 
tude, must  have  thrilled  tlieir  hearts  when  they  heard 
from  His  lips  those  strange  words :  "  What  I  have  done 
now,  the  same  do  ye  in  commemoration  of  me."  Then, 
dearly  beloved,  the  great  Christian  sacrifice  was  inaugu- 
rated, and  on  the  morrow  to  be  made  perfect  in  the  sacri- 
fice of  the  cross,  and  henceforth  to  tlie  end  of  time  to  be 
renewed  and  done  in  all  its  reality,  as  if  Christ  our  Lord 
was  visibly  present  doing  it  on  every  altar  of  the  holy 
Catholic  Church  until  the  last  days  of  the  world. 

The  victim,  therefore,  of  the  holy  Mass  is  no  other  than 
Jesus  Christ ;  the  scene  of  Calvary  is  renewed  in  its  reali- 
ty, though  in  a  different  and  mystical  form.  The  same 
body  and  blood,  soul  and  divinity,  are  there  ;  the  same 
separation  of  body  and  blood  mystically  takes  place  for 
the  purpose  of  sacrifice  ;  but  as  a  sacrament  He  remains 
abiding  upon  our  altars  for  His  people,  and  the  word  of 
the  Evangelist  is  fulfilled  :  "  Behold  the  tabernacle  of  God 
with  man,  and  He  shall  dwell  in  the  midst  of  them,  and 
they.shall  be  His  people,  and  He  in  the  midst  of  them  shall 
be  their  God."  He  as  a  Victim  is  the  same  ;  so  the  Priest 
is  the  same. 

O  my  dearly  beloved  !  I  am  about  to  announce  to  you 
a  great  mystery.  When  the  Eternal  God  became  man 
the  eyes  of  men  only  beheld  one  who  appeared  to  be  a 
mere  man  like  others.  He  said  to  His  apostles  :  "  Whom 
do  men  say  that  I  am?"  and  they  answered  and  said: 
"Some  say  that  Thou  art  Jeremias,  John  the  Baptist,  or 
Isaias,  or  one  of  the  prophets."  "  Whom  do  you  say  that 
I  am  V  And  Peter,  dropping  down  upon  his  knees,  raised 
up  his  hands  in  admiration  and  cried  out,  in  the  name  of 
all  his  fellow-apostles :  "  I  declare  that  Thou  art  the  Christ, 
the  Son  of  the  living  God."  Then  did  our  Lord  answer 
him  and  say:  "Blessed  art  thou,  Simon  Bar-Jona,  for 
flesh  and  blood" — the  eyes  of  the  body — "have  not  re- 


403  The  Altar  of  the  Sacrkd  Heart. 

vealed  this  to  thee,  but  my  Father  in  heaven."  They  be- 
held only  the  mere  man,  yet  that  man  was  the  true  God. 
In  virtue  of  His  incarnation  He  received  the  priesthood. 
"  This  day  have  I  begotten  Thee,"  says  the  eternal  Father; 
*'  Thou  art  unto  me  a  priest  for  ever,  according  to  the  order 
Melohisedech."  He  was  ordained  a  priest  the  moment  that 
in  Mary's  immaculate  bosom  he  took  our  flesh  and  blood, 
the  moment  that  Mary,  bowing  down  her  head,  said, 
'-'Fiat'''  ("Be  this  done  unto  me  ") ;  that  moment  she  was 
the  Mother,  not  only  of  the  eternal  God  made  man,  but  she 
was  the  Mother  of  the  priest  Jesus  Christ.  Now,  dearly 
beloved,  when  our  Divine  Lord  said  to  His  apostles  :  "  This 
do  ye  in  commemoration  of  me,"  He  passed  unto  them 
mystically,  but  most  really,  the  mysterious  powder  and 
character  and  attribute  of  his  own  priesthood.  The  priest, 
therefore,  as  a  priest,  is  the  representative  of  Jesus  Christ. 
In  the  pulpit,  speaking  under  the  supervision  of  a  watch- 
ful and  infallible  Church,  responsible  to  that  Church  for 
every  word  that  his  lips  utter,  he  represents  the  Word  of 
God  Incarnate,  and  instructing  the  people  in  the  language 
of  truth.  But  when  he  clothes  himself  in  the  sacred  vest- 
ments and  ascends  the  holy  altar  he  is  something  more  than 
a  mere  representative  of  Jesus  Christ.  He  is  there  as  a 
priest  only,  scarcely  any  longer  as  a  man  only  so  far  as  the 
man  is  necessary  for  the  purposes  of  the  priesthood,  but  the 
man  is  altogether  priestly ;  in  other  words,  ihQ  action  is 
altogether  that  of  the  Son  of  God,  the  priest  Jesus  Christ. 
Therefore  it  is  that  from  the  moment  that  he  ascends  that 
altar  and  enters  upon  the  canon  of  the  Mass,  and  espe- 
cially at  the  moment  of  consecration,  the  individual  man 
who  is  there  seems  to  disappear ;  he  no  longer  speaks 
as  a  man,  but  as  the  Son  of  God.  He  speaks  in  the  ele- 
ments before  him  to  be  consecrated  as  if  they  were  of  his 
own  body.  He  speaks  the  words  of  consolation  as  if  it 
was  his  own  body  and  his  own  blood  he  was  speaking  of. 
He  takes  the  bread  into  his  hands,  reminds  the  Eternal 
Lord  and  Everlasting  Priest  of  His  promise  and  His  mis- 
sion, and  then,  entering  entirely  into  the  very  person  of 


The  Altar  of  the  Sacred  Heart.  407 

our  Divine  Saviour,  he  says  over  the  bread  :  "This  is  my 
body"  ;  that  moment  it  becomes  the  body  of  the  Lord. 
He  says  over  the  wine  :  "This  is  my  blood,"  and  that  mo- 
ment it  is  the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ.  Behold,  therefore, 
how,  although  a  man  may  stand  there,  yet  the  priest  is 
still  Jesus  Clirist  our  Lord.  The  words  are  His,  the  action 
is  His,  the  power  and  the  efficacy  is  His.  Oh !  would  that 
the  sanctity  of  that  unworthy  celebrant  were  only  as  that 
of  Jesus  Christ.  If,  then,  such  be  the  Victim,  if  such  be 
the  Priest,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  altar  \  How  holy 
must  it  be !  What  wonder  if  from  the  beginning  the 
choicest  woods  of  the  forests,  the  choicest  marbles  and 
precious  stones  of  the  earth,  are  gathered  together  care- 
fully and  thoughtfully  by  the  Church  of  God,  wherewith 
to  build  her  holy  altars  \  What  wonder  that  prayer  and 
supplication  should  be  poured  over  it ;  that  all  the  angels 
and  saints  of  God  should  be  invited  and  invoked  to  assist 
at  its  dedication  ;  that  the  holy  oils  that  ordain  the  priests, 
consecrate  the  bishops,  anoint  the  dying,  should  be  freely 
used  upon  its  sacred  surface  ?  What  wonder  when  we  con- 
sider the  high  purpose  for  which  it  is  raised  ?  There  are 
all  our  debts  paid.  We  owe  unto  God  first  of  all  a  debt 
of  adoration  and  of  praise,  but  how  shall  we  pay  it  ? 

The  word  and  the  command  of  Scripture  is :  ''^  Laudate 
Dominwm  secunduvi  multitudinem  misericordice  Ejus^'' — 
Praise  the  Lord,  O  ye  people  !  and  praise  Him  according 
to  the  measure  and  the  multitude  of  His  greatness.  That 
is  to  say,  give  Him  infinite  praise,  for  His  greatness  is  in- 
finite ;  and  who  can  pay  this  infinite  debt  ?  The  sadness 
of  despair  must  come  upon  us.  We  are  like  the  poor  ser- 
vant in  the  Gospel  who,  not  having  a  penny,  was  indebted 
to  his  master  for  ten  thousand  talents,  and  with  the  same 
servant  we  can  approach  the  altar  and  say:  "0  Master! 
have  patience  with  me,  and  I  will  pay  thee  all."  Yes,  let 
the  priest  approach,  let  him  put  forth  the  mystical  words 
of  consecration ;  presently  there  is  One  there,  one  brother 
in  our  human  nature,  who  wdll  pay  to  His  Eternal  Father 
for  us  all  the  debt  of  infinite  adoration  and  praise  to  the 


408  The  Altar  of  the  Sacred  Heart. 

Lord  according  to  the  measure  of  His  greatness.  We  owe 
nnto  Gcd  the  debt  of  propitiation  for  our  sins.  How  many- 
are  those  sins,  how  deep  the  dye  of  their  iniquity,  each  one 
can  answer  for  himself.  Perhaps  those  who  are  accounted 
the  best  in  the  midst  of  ns,  when  they  kneel  alone  before 
God  are  obliged  to  say,  with  the  Psalmist:  "  My  iniquities 
are  superabundant ;  they  are  as  the  sands  of  the  sea  of 
God."  Yet  one  of  those  sins,  even  one,  brings  with  it  so 
much  guilt  that  we  incur  an  infinite  debt  of  satisfaction 
and  propitiation.  How  shall  we  pay  ?  We  must  turn  again 
to  the  holy  altar,  and  there  the  language  is  spoken,  and 
Ihe  cry  goes  forth  of  blood,  crying  out  more  loudly  for 
pardon  and  mercy  than  the  blood  of  Abel,  the  first  innocent 
victim,  cried  out  for  vengeance  upon  his  destroyer.  We 
owe  nnto  God  the  debt  of  thanksgiving;  for,  oh!  how 
much  have  we  not  received  from  Him,  and  how  unworthy 
have  we  been  of  His  gi-aces  ?  A  thousand  fall  daily  at  our 
side,  and  ten  thousand  at  our  right  hand,  and  yet  God 
keeps  the  punishment  of  death  away  from  us.  Graces 
and  blessings  have  anticipated  our  youthful  faltering 
steps.  Where  many  have  fallen  God  has  enabled  us  to 
stand  ;  where  many  nations  have  gone  away  from  the  faith 
and  the  truth,  our  fathers  received  in  the  day  of  their  dire 
necessity  the  holy  and  the  high  grace  of  fortitude  even 
unto  death  for  the  faith  of  God,  and  that  precious  faith  is 
the  grace  of  our  inheritance.  How  much,  then,  have  we 
received  both  as  a  people  and  individually  from  the  Lord 
our  God,  and  how  little  have  we  deserved  His  gifts ! 
Therefore  may  we  exclaim  with  David  of  old:  ^''Quid 
retribuam?  Quid  retribuamf^''  What  shall  I  return  to 
Thee  ?  What  return  shall  I  make  to  Thee,  O  God  1  for  all 
that  Thou  hast  given  to  me  ?  Call  the  priest  to  the  altar, 
put  him  there  vested  and  clothed  in  the  character  of  the 
eternal  priesthood  of  the  Son  of  God,  and  he  will  place 
upon  the  altar  One  whose  simplest  word  is  infinite  thanks- 
giving to  God.  He  will  place  upon  the  altar  One  who, 
worshipping  and  adoring,  commands  the  attention  of  aU 
heaven,  and  whose  words  fall  so  sweetly  into  His  Father's 


The  Altar  of  the  Sacred  Heart.  409 

ears  and  upon  His  Father' s  heart,  and  a  voice  comes  from 
heaven  and  cries  :  "  This  is  my  beloved  Son,  in  whom  J  am 
well  pleased."  And  thus  all  our  mighty  debts  are  paid, 
all  our  hopes  are  centred,  all  our  joys  of  life  are  purified 
and  sanctified,  all  our  sorrows  are  lightened  and  smootlied ; 
all  that  we  look  for  in  the  future,  all  that  we  hope  to 
remedy  of  the  past — ^all  find  their  centre  upon  an  altar  of 
the  holy  Catholic  Church.  Well,  therefore,  may  we  ex- 
claim with  the  Psalmist:  "How  beautiful  are  Thy  altars, 
O  Lord  of  hosts!"  But  there  is  a  beauty  altogether  its 
own  attaching  to  the  altar  which  we  have  dedicated  to- 
day. It  is  the  altar  of  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus.  It  is  the 
altar  where  all  those,  the  faithful,  all  those  who  believe, 
when  they  come  to  ask  for  light  in  darkness,  for  strength 
in  weakness,  for  comfort  in  sorrow,  for  help  of  any  kind 
for  soul  or  body,  it  is  to  that  altar  that  they  will  naturally 
turn  their  steps.  For  the  Sacred  Heart  of  our  Divine  Lord 
and  Saviour  is  the  home  of  eternal,  undying  love  ;  it  is  the 
home  of  that  infinite  mercy  whence  came  forth  all  the 
redemption  of  mankind ;  it  is  the  living  chalice  of  the 
Precious  Blood  that  was  poured  out  so  generously  for  us  ; 
it  is  the  Sacred  Heart  that  throbbed  with  infinite  compas- 
sion when  He  beheld  the  widow  of  Naim  weeping  over  her 
son ;  it  is  the  Sacred  Heart  which  troubled  within  Him, 
stirred  up  the  fountain  of  His  tears,  which  flowed  freely 
and  mingled  with  those  of  Mary  as  she  wept  over  her 
brother' s  grave.  Oh  !  it  is  the  heart  of  infinite  forgiveness, 
that,  whilst  it  was  fading  and  dying  and  breaking  on  the 
cross,  still  found  words  of  joy,  reconciliation,  peace,  and 
eternal  promise  for  the  thief  who  was  hanging  at  His  side. 
Let  us,  therefore,  rejoice  in  the  beauty  of  this  new  altar, 
as  well  as  avail  ourselves  of  the  Sacred  Heart  and  all  its 
love  and  mercy.  Therefore  let  us,  O  my  beloved  !  above 
all  remember  that  there  is  an  altar  dearer  unto  God  even 
than  that  upon  which  the  blood  of  His  own  Divine  Son  is 
poured,  and  that  is  the  altar  of  our  heart.  Let  us  conse- 
crate these  thoughts  to  Him  ;  let  the  unctions  of  His  divine 
charity  pour,  let  the  lamp  of  Christian  love  burn  brightly 


410  The  Altar  of  the  Sacred  Heart. 

there,  let  the  charity  of  God  and  cleanliness  of  the  true 
Christian  reign  there  ;  then,  indeed,  shall  we  be,  in  the 
words  of  the  apostle,  "the  living  temples  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,"  the  living,  breathing  statues  of  representation  of 
Jesus  Christ ;  then,  indeed,  shall  we  put  Him  on  who  is 
our  peace,  our  hope,  our  joy,  our  consolation  in  life,  in 
death,  and  for  eternity,  to  whom  be  all  glory,  with  the 
Father  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  for  ever  and  evBr. 


The  Virgin  Mother. 


The  following  eloquent  sermon  was  the  last  of  the  series  of  Advent  dis- 
courses delivered  by  Father  Burke  in  the  Dominican  Church,  Dublin, 
1877.  It  is  a  most  beautiful  and  earnest  tribute  of  love  to  the  Virgin 
Mother. 

"  Drop  down  your  dews,  ye  heavens,  from  above,  and  ye  clouds  rain  down 
the  just  one ;  and  open  thou  earth  and  bud  forth  a  Saviour." 

THESE  words,  my  dearly-beloved  brethren,  taken  from 
the  forty-fifth  chapter  of  the  Prophecies  of  Isaias,  were 
the  text  to  which  I  invited  your  attention  and  considera- 
tion when  we  began  our  no  vena,  and  to  the  same  words  I 
turn  this  evening  at  the  conclusion  of  our  Christmas  de- 
votions. I  told  you  that  in  this  divine  and  adorable 
mystery  of  the  Incarnation  we  had  to  consider  the  action 
of  heaven  and  the  action  of  earth — the  action  of  heaven, 
because  it  was  a  mystery  accomplished  first  of  all  in 
heaven,  and  through  heavenly  influence  in  the  person  of 
the  Divine  and  Eternal  Word  ;  the  action  of  earth,  be- 
cause it  is  also  a  mystery  of  earth,  consummated  on  earth, 
consummated  in  a  child  of  man,  a  true  child  of  a  mortal 
woman,  the  infant  Son  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  as  traly  human 
as  He  is  divine.  Up  to  the  present  time  in  all  the  reflec- 
tions that  I  have  put  before  you  I  have  only  spoken  to 
you  of  the  heavenly  aspect  of  this  mystery,  the  attributes 
of  God  as  they  are  revealed  through  it  to  us,  and  the 
advantages  resulting  to  man  from  the  revelation  of  the 
divine  attributes  of  God.  But  neither  you,  nor  I,  nor  the 
angels  that  are  listening  to  my  voice,  nor  God  Himself,  that 

411 


412  Tffn  Virgin  Mother. 

is  about  to  be  born  this  night  into  the  midst  of  us,  would 
be  satidiied  if  we  were  to  conclude  these  discourses  without 
special  allusion  to  the  Virgin  Mother  of  our  Saviour.  To 
her,  therefore,  and  to  her  part  in  the  adorable  mystery  of 
the  Incarnation,  I  invite  your  particular  attention  this 
evening.  "Drop  down  -your  dews,  ye  heavens,  from 
above,  and  ye  clouds  rain  down  the  just  one,"  says  the 
prophet,  but  he  adds,  "  And  open  thou  earth  and  bud  forth 
a  Saviour."  The  virgin  womb  of  Mary  was  the  earth  from 
which  the  Saviour  sprung.  Mary's  connection  with  the 
mystery  of  the  Incarnation  may  be  viewed  in  a  double 
light :  first,  her  relation  to  God,  next  her  relation  to  man. 
In  her  relation  to  God  we  will  consider  what  she  received, 
in  her  relation  to  man  we  will  consider  what  she  bestowed. 
JFrom  the  moment  that  Mary  was  born  into  this  world, 
from  the  moment  she  lifted  her  virginal  eyes  to  heaven, 
her  sweet  and  i)ure  relations  with  God  commenced  and  His 
gifts  and  graces  were  showered  upon  her  head.  Her  rela- 
tions with  man  began  with  the  Man-God,  Jesus  Christ,  her 
son,  and  it  is  then  no  longer  a  question  of  what  she  re- 
ceived but  of  what  she  gave.  Into  these  considerations  I 
will  divide  my  discourse  this  evening — Mary's  relations  to 
God  and  Mary's  relations  to  ourselves.  There  are  many 
who  ought  to  be  lieie  to-night  to  celebrate  the  mercy  of 
God  who  are  worshipping  at  another  shrine  and  imagine 
they  are  paying  some  homage  to  the  Christmas  festival — 
strange  homage  of  mortal  sin  to  be  offered  to  God  in  this 
holy  time  that  brings  the  Eternal  God  into  the  midst  of 
pis  creatures.  They  turn  away  from  their  Creator ;  they 
admit  the  df-mons  of  drunkenness,  of  gluttony,  of  immor- 
ality into  their  midst ;  they  make  them  their  Christmas 
gods,  kneel  down  in  the  dust  and  worship  them. 

First,  then,  I  invite  your  consideration  to  Mary  in  the 
mystery  of  the  Incarnation  in  relation  to  God,  in  relation 
to  what  she  received.  Every  gift  of  God,  dearly  beloved, 
whetlier  it  be  vouchsafed  to  the  pure  and  spotless  Virgin 
or  to  the  lowliest  sinner  upon  the  eartli,  takos  the  form  of 
divine  grace.     In  whatever  form  God's  gift  may  come. 


The  Virgin  Mother.  413 

however  much  God's  gift  may  be  abused,  it  was  originally 
intended  as  a  grace.  One  may  receive  great  natural  taleut 
and  genius,  wonderful  intellectual  endowments  ;  he  may 
turn  these  gifts  against  Almighty  God,  as  so  many  of  the 
highest  and  noblest  of  our  geniuses  have  done  ;  but  they 
were  given  witli  the  wish,  with  the  intention  that  they 
should  be  employed  in  the  service  of  God,  of  society,  and 
of  fellow-men.  Reason  is  a  noble  inheritance,  a  great 
fortune  bestowed  on  man  ;  he  may  use  it  for  purposes  of 
dissipation,  vile  licentiousness,  and  degrading  debauchery. 
He  may  employ  it  to  sneer  and  gibe  at  the  power  of  the 
God  who  gave  it.  He  may  offend  his  God  in  a  thousand 
ways  by  means  of  the  very  genius  wherewith  God  has  en- 
dowed him.  But  though  man  may  misdirect  and  may 
abuse  the  highest  and  the  holiest  gifts  of  God,  it  still 
remains  true  that  whatever  God  gives  man  He  wishes  and 
intends  that  it  shall  revert  and  return  to  Himself  again, 
through  the  reasonable  homage  of  man's  soul.  The  gifts 
that  Mary  received  from  God  were  intended  as  a  prepara- 
tion for  the  divine  and  crowning  grace  which  she  was 
destined  to  receive,  the  gift  of  a  divine  maternity.  And 
she  most  faithfully  corresponded  with  the  graces  she  re- 
ceived. You  have  seen  how  every  gift  of  God  resolves 
itself  into  its  highest  and  most  privileged  form  of  divine 
grace,  and  every  grace  is  increased  and  enhanced  by  the 
correspondence  of  the  recipient. 

Mary's  graces,  and  Mary's  correspondence  to  those 
graces,  began  even  in  her  mother's  womb.  God,  in  view 
of  the  high  designs  He  had  upon  her,  began  her  life  with  a 
grace  more  grand  than  was  ever  vouchsafed  to  man  before, 
than  any  ever  granted  to  the  highest  angel  in  heaven. 
She  was  conceived  in  her  mother's  womb  free  from  the 
taint  of  original  sin.  But  you  may  ask  are  not  the  angels 
free  from  the  taint  of  sin,  and  are  not  the  angels  pure 
through  the  same  power  that  made  Mary  pure  ?  I  answer, 
yes.  In  what,  then,  does  the  gift  that  Mary  received  tran- 
scend the  gift  granted  to  tlie  angels  ?  In  the  language  of 
theology,  their  gift  was  general,  Mary's  was  exceptionaL 


414  The  Virgin  Mother. 

The  angels  were  purified  by  a  universal  law  made  by  Al 
mighty  God  that  all  His  angels  should  be  faithful,  and  they 
that  were  unfaithful  were  the  exceptions  to  that  law.  The 
demons  were  damned  exceptionally,  the  angels  were  saved 
according  to  the  law.  But  the  whole  human  race  sinned  in 
Adam.  No  man  after  the  time  of  Adam,  no  matter  how 
holy  he  might  be,  was  exempted  from  that  sin.  Adam  de- 
filed the  fountain-head  of  our  nature,  polluted  the  sources 
of  our  being.  Sin,  then,  became  the  rule  with  man,  exemp- 
tion from  sin  the  exception.  Mary  is  the  one  solitary 
exception  to  the  rule.  For  the  forgiveness  of  original  sin 
was  needed  the  atonement  of  the  Victim.  But  for  Mary 
the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation  was  anticii)ated,  the  merits 
of  the  Saviour  were  ap})lied  before  His  time.  For  her  and 
Him  the  guilt  of  original  sin  was  anticipated  before  it  was 
incurred.  Oh  !  one  grand,  glorious,  wonderful  exception 
to  the  law  of  sin  introduced  by  Adam's  crime.  Here,  then, 
the  grace  of  Mary's  immaculate  conception  places  her  on 
an  eminence  of  instant  and  pre-eminent  purity.  All  the 
men  upon  earth,  all  the  angels  in  heaven,  must  look  up  to 
her.  Even  at  her  conception  in  her  mother's  womb  she 
surpasses  all  the  angels  in  heaven  in  the  extent  of  the 
graces  which  she  has  received.  The  graces  of  the  angels 
end  with  the  grace  with  which  she  began,  perfect  purity, 
sinlessness,  and  acceptability  to  God.  From  her  birth  she 
was  sinless  before  the  Lord  ;  she  basked  in  the  bright  sun- 
light of  God's  grace  and  favor.  Her  virginal  bosom  was 
tlie  only  home  on  earth  worthy  of  a  God,  and  she  alone  of 
all  God's  creatures  might  truly  say:  God  Himself  is  come 
to  me,  and  I  am  become  the  Mother  of  my  God.  That 
wonderful  and  adorable  mystery  of  the  Incarnation,  in- 
scrutable to  the  angels,  inconceivable  to  man,  is  accom- 
plished in  Mary.  When  the  Almighty  bade  His  holy 
prophet  go  forth  and  announce  this  mystery  to  man,  even 
lie,  the  inspired  of  God,  was  confounded  and  amazed,  and 
exclaimed:  "Spare  me,  O  Lord!  and  send  me  not  forth 
with  such  a  tale,  for  if  I  shall  say  to  the  sons  of  men.  Be- 
hold, a  virgin  shall  conceive  and  bring  forth  a  Son,  and  His 


The  Virgin  Mother.  415 

name  shall  be  called  Jesus,  and  He  shall  be  the  Son  of 
Grod,  what  man  will  believe  me  V  Yet  it  was  all  accom- 
plished in  Mary. 

For  over  four  thousand  years  darkness  overshadowed 
the  world,  and  the  face  of  God  was  hidden  from  His  crea- 
tures. Mary  was  the  bright  day-star  that  was  to  herald 
the  rising  of  the  glorious  sun  of  justice  upon  the  world. 
Sixteen  years,  according  to  the  best  authorities,  were  spent 
in  ardent  preparation  for  the  great  mystery  she  was  des- 
tined to  accomplish,  and  every  moment  of  her  existence 
was  an  accumulation  of  God' s  graces  in  her  soul.  Oh ! 
wonderful  are  God's  dealings  with  a  faithful  soul.  The 
soul  that  corresponds  to  God's  favors  receives  graces  a 
hundredfold — a  thousandfold — receives  graces  in  an  incon- 
ceivable addition  known  only  to  God.  From  the  moment 
of  Mary's  conception  she  received  grace  after  grace  from 
God.  Oh  !  how  wonderful  must  have  been  that  superstruc- 
ture of  grace  in  Mary,  when  the  first  gift  bestowed  upon 
her  surpassingly  exceeded  the  highest  favor  conferred  up- 
on man  or  angel.  God's  favors  are  over,  but  the  prepara- 
tion for  some  crowning  favor  which  he  intends  to  bestow, 
if  we  merit  it  by  faithful  correspondence,  will  surpass  and 
consummate  all  that  have  gone  before.  It  is  so  in  our  lives. 
I  have  had  the  happiness  of  administering  the  Holy  Com- 
munion to  many  whom  I  see  here  to-night.  God  could 
give  no  higher  favor  than  this,  for  it  was  Himself  He  gave  ; 
but  many  graces  thankfully  received,  faithfully  improved, 
must  precede  the  worthy  assistance  at  the  table  of  the  Lord. 
Great  grace  went  before  the  horror  of  sin,  the  spirit  of  re- 
pentance, the  grace  that  made  you  resolve  that  you  would 
die  rather  than  that  you  would  again  offend  the  Almighty. 
All  these  were  necessary  to  fit  you  for  the  crowning  grace 
of  communion  with  God.  Even  so  it  was  with  Mary. 
Sixteen  years  of  saintly  sinlessness,  of  exalted  purity, 
were  her  preparation  for  the  crowning  favor  of  God  ;  and 
oh  !  how  marvellous  must  have  been  that  preparation,  of 
which  the  consummation  was  so  high  and  noble,  the  high- 
est and  the  noblest  that  God  Himself  had  it  in  His  power  to 


416  The  Tirgix  Mother. 

accomplish.  Surely  might  the  archangel  of  God  exclaim  : 
"  Hail  Mary,  full  of  grace,  the  Lord  is  with  thee"  ;  for  she 
indeed  abounded  in  grace. 

The  crowning  gift  of  God  to  Mary  was  God  Himself, 
the  eternal  Son  of  God,  the  light  of  the  Father's  glory, 
before  whom  the  purest  and  the  highest  in  heaven  kneel 
in  speechless  admiration,  and  who  came  down  from  His 
throne  in  heaven,  from  the  bosom  of  the  Almighty,  to 
dwell  in  her  pure  bosom,  to  be  her  Son  for  ever.  There 
had  been  jDure  and  holy  women  on  the  earth  before  Mary's 
time,  but  to  none  but  her  had  this  great  grace  been  gmnt- 
ed,  for  none  but  she  was  worthy. 

There  was  Mary,  the  sister  of  Moses,  the  friend  of  God, 
she  who  led  the  virginal  choirs  of  the  chosen  i)eople  ;  but 
she  was  not  worthy.  There  was  the  daughter  .of  Jephte, 
who,  when  it  was  announced  to  her  that  she  must  die,  for 
her  father  had  sworn  it  before  the  Lord,  asked  for  a  little 
space  of  time  that  she  might  mourn  among  her  maidens, 
not  the  life  she  sacrificed  in  obedience  to  her  father's  vow, 
but  the  life  she  must  forfeit,  she  that  might  be  the  chosen 
Jewish  maiden  who  would  become  the  mother  of  the  Mes- 
sias.  Even  to  the  strong  woman  and  the  valiant,  the 
mother  of  the  Machabees,  who  died  seven  deaths  in  the 
death  of  her  seven  sons  for  the  faith  of  God,  even  she  was 
not  deemed  worthy  of  this  crowning  favor.  For  Mary,  and 
Mary  alone,  was  reserved  the  highest,  the  grandest  gift 
that  an  omnipotent  God  ever  did  or  will  ever  bestow 
upon  His  creature.  Such  were  the  favors  tliat  Mary  re- 
ceived from  God.  Let  us  consider  now  the  favors  that 
Mary  conferred  upon  men. 

"  Drop  down  your  dews,  ye  heavens,  from  nl>ove.  and 
ye  clouds  rain  down  the  just  one;  and  open  thou  onrtli 
and  bud  forth  a  Saviour."  It  is  the  latter  part  of  the  text 
that  we  are  now  to  consider.  Earth  as  well  as  licavc^n.  Mary 
as  well  as  God,  had  her  part  in  the  glorious  inysi.i y  of  tlie 
Incarnation — that  mystery  by  which  mnii  was  redeemed 
from  bondage  and  from  sin  and  restored  to  tlio  ho]ie  of 
heaven.     We    must    consider    now  the  esseiiLialrf  in  the 


The  Virgin  Mother.  417 

atonement,  the  essentials  in  the  victims  for  this  great  sac- 
rifice. Man  has  outraged  the  eternal  majesty  of  God  by- 
sin.  The  offence  is  infinite ;  the  atonement  must  be  infinite 
to  satisfy  the  justice  of  God.  The  offence  was  committed 
by  a  man,  and  a  man  must  be  the  victim.  An  infinite  and 
a  human  victim  is  necessary  for  the  sacrifice.  God  is  ne- 
cessary in  this  work  of  our  redemption,  for  God  alone  is 
infinite.  Man  is  necessary,  for  man  alone  has  offended. 
The  victim  must  be  human  and  divine,  true  God  and  true 
man— as  truly  God  as  he  is  man,  as  truly  man  as  he  is 
God.  Well,  then,  might  the  prophet  exclaim:  "O  ye 
heavens !  send  down  your  dews,  and  ye  clouds  rain  down 
the  just  one " ;  and  well  might  he  add :  "And  open  thou 
earth  and  bud  forth  a  Saviour." 

For  the  purpose  of  the  Incarnation,  therefore,  the  hu- 
man element  was  as  necessary  as  the  divine.  The  victim 
must  be  God,  that  he  may  offer  to  God's  justice  an  infinite 
atonement  for  an  infinite  offence.  He  must  be  man,  that 
he  might  suffer  and  die  for  the  sins  of  man.  In  Jesus 
Christ,  the  Man-God,  that  victim  was  found.  He  pre- 
served in  His  person  all  the  power,  all  the  wisdom,  all  the 
glory,  all  the  infinite  merit  of  God  ;  but  He  took  to  Him- 
self a  human  nature,  capable  of  sorrow,  shame,  suffering, 
and  death.  That  assumption  was  real,  that  assumption 
was  eternal.  Tliis  is  difficult  to  conceive,  this  is  difficult 
to  believe.  There  were  heretics  that  recoiled  from  this ; 
they  could  not  believe  that  the  great  and  eternal  God 
could  associate  to  Himself  for  ever  this  debased  and  de- 
graded nature  of  ours,  and  some  said  :  "Oh  !  yes,  he  was 
a  good  man,  he  was  a  just  man,  he  was  a  holy  man,  but  he 
was  only  a  man,  he  was  not  God  " ;  and  they  are  burning 
in  hell,  for  they  denied  the  divinity  of  Christ.  And  there 
were  others  who  said  He  was  God  indeed.  His  life  pro- 
claims it,  His  words  proclaim  it,  but  He  was  not  man  ;  and 
they,  too,  are  burning  in  hell,  for  they  denied  the  humanity 
of  the  Redeemer.  Belief  in  His  divinity  and  belief  in  His 
humanity  are  equally  essential  for  salvation.  It  is  as  ne- 
cessary to  believe  that  Jesus  Christ  is  the  son  of  Mary  as  it 


418  The  Viegin  Mother. 

is  to  believe  that  He  was  the  Son  of  God.  Mary  was  an  es- 
sential instrument  in  the  hands  of  God  to  effect  the  re- 
demption of  the  whole  human  race.  She  gave  the  blood 
of  her  blood,  the  flesh  of  her  flesh,  the  bone  of  her  bone 
to  form  the  liumanity  of  the  Saviour.  In  her  womb  the 
Second  Person  of  the  Blessed  Trinity  assumed  that  human 
form  that  was  necessary  for  Him  to  work  out  our  salva- 
tion. "And  the  Word  was  made  flesh  and  dwelt  among 
us."  Of  all  the  human  beings  that  lived  upon  this  earth 
Mary  alone  was  pure  enough  to  become  the  Mother  of  God. 
Oh  !  how  perfect  must  have  been  the  purity,  how  spotless 
the  sinlessness  of  that  humanity  of  Mary,  from  which  the 
all-pure  and  all-holy  God  did  not  disdain  to  assume  a  body 
to  Himself.  Remember,  Mary's  free  consent  was  necessary 
for  the  consummation  of  this  sacrifice.  God  never  did, 
and  God  never  will,  coerce  the  will  of  one  of  His  rational 
creatures.  He  sent  His  angel  to  announce  to  Mary  the  honor 
that  was  intended  for  her,  but  she  was  free  to  refuse  that 
honor  if  she  chose,  and  her  consent  was  necessary  for  our 
redemption. 

"  Behold,"  said  the  angel,  "  thou  shalt  conceive  in  thy 
womb,  and  thou  shalt  bring  forth  a  son,  and  thou  shalt 
call  his  name  Jesus."  And  Mary  answered:  "How  can 
this  be,  for  I  know  no  man  ?"  Even  for  the  dignity  of  the 
Mother  of  God  she  was  unwilling  to  sacrifice  t\iQ  virginity 
to  which  she  had  vowed  herself  before  the  Lord,  and  the 
angel  eased  her  fears  and  told  her  that  by  the  instrumen- 
tality of  the  Holy  Ghost  should  the  mystery  be  accom- 
plished, and  then  indeed  the  Virgin  cried  out :  "  Behold 
the  handmaid  of  the  Lord  ;  be  it  done  as  the  angel  hath 
spoken."  God  that  instant  became  man  in  Mary's  womb. 
Her  free  consent  was  aiveii,  and  the  work  of  man's  re- 
demption was  begun.  In  this  wonderful  mystery,  in  which 
God  Himself  disdains  not  to  ask  the  consent  of  His  crea- 
ture for  the  great  work  which  Tic  was  about  to  accomplish, 
we  have  before  our  eyes  a  wonderful  proof  of  Mary's 
purity  and  Mary's  grandeur.  Mark  the  language  in 
which  the  inspired  prophet  speaks  of  the  Queen  of  Hea- 


The  Virgin  Mother.  419 

ven.  Who  is  slie,  lie  exclaims,  that  comes  like  the  morn- 
ing, rising  fair  as  the  moon,  bright  as  the  sun,  terrible 
as  an  army  set  in  battle  array  ?  Yet  she  is  humble  and 
loving  as  she  is  beautiful  and  glorious.  Reflect,  dearly 
beloved,  wliat  Mary  has  done  for  man  in  the  mystery  of 
the  Incarnation.  By  that  mystery,  in  which  her  part  was 
so  large,  salvation  v^as  purchased  for  us  all.  We  may 
scorn  and  trample  upon  the  priceless  gift  if  we  will,  but 
salvation  is  offered  to  us  all,  and  there  is  no  soul  to-day  in 
the  abyss  of  hell  that  might  not  be  in  heaven  if  it  chose. 
Oh  !  how  much,  my  brethren,  has  the  Incarnation  of  Jesus 
in  Mary's  womb  given  to  man.  It  gives  us  the  right  to 
hope  that  when  our  dying  eyes  close  for  ever  upon  this 
world  they  may  open  upon  a  world  that  is  brighter  far 
than  this,  that  in  death  we  may  behold  our  Redeemer.  It 
gives  us  the  right,  this  holy  Christmas  season,  by  confes- 
sion and  communion,  to  approach  our  Saviour  ;  the  cer- 
tainty that  if  we  be  but  faithful  to  the  graces  we  receive, 
we  shall  never  know  death,  but  shall  live  for  ever  in  the 
kingdom  of  our  Father.  All  tliese  priceless  privileges 
were  conferred  upon  us  when  Mary  said  to  the  messenger 
of  God:  "Behold  the  handmaid  of  the  Lord  ;  be  it  done 
unto  me  according  to  thy  word."  Behold,  then,  the  posi- 
tion Avhich  this  wonderful  woman  holds  amid  the  human 
race  !  Behold  all  she  has  received  from  God  !  behold  all 
she  has  given  to  man  !  God  has  made  her  His  Mother  ;  we 
have  become  her  sons.     She  is  our  Mother. 

When  our  Redeem.er  was  expiring  on  the  cross,  and 
His  Mother  stood  at  its  foot  in  speechless  agony,  our 
Saviour  in  His  dying  words  said  to  her,  indicating  His 
beloved  disciple  John:  "  Woman,  behold  thy  son  ! "  and 
to  St.  John  He  said:  "  Son,  behold  thy  mother!"  St. 
John  stood  thus  the  representative  of  the  whole  human 
race.  That  moment  we  became  sons  of  the  Mother  of  God, 
that  moment  all  the  intense  love  in  Mary's  breaking  heart 
was  poured  out  upon  us.  We  are  commanded  to  love  and 
honor  our  parents.  The  same  God  that  demands  our  ado- 
ration for  Himself  demands  our  reverence  for  them.     The 


430  The  Virgin  Mother. 

same  God  that  has  said:  "I  am  the  Lord  thy  God,  and 
tliou  shalt  not  have  strange  gods  before  me,"  has  said  also  : 
"  Honor  thy  father  and  thy  mother,  that  tliy  days  may  be 
long  in  the  land."  'We  must  honor  our  fathers  and  mo- 
thers in  the  order  of  nature  because  God  has  commanded 
it ;  but  God  requires  a  reasonable,  not  a  blind,  obedience, 
and  it  needs  no  command  to  induce  us  to  honor  the  mo- 
ther who  bore  us  into  the  world.  We  honor  and  love  her 
instinctively,  we  honor  and  love  her  because  of  the  untir- 
ing care  and  the  tender  love  she  has  lavished  upon  us,  be- 
cause of  the  fierce  throes  of  her  maternity,  the  agony  she 
endured  that  we  might  be  born  in  the  world.  But  if  we 
thus  honor  our  mother  after  the  order  of  nature,  how  much 
higher  should  be  our  honor,  how  much  deeper  our  love  for 
our  Mother  after  the  order  of  grace  !  Our  mother  brought 
us  forth  to  this  material  life.  Mary  brought  us  forth  to 
life  eternal.  With  much  suffering  and  with  many  prayers 
did  our  natural  mother  give  us  birth  ;  but  Mary  suffered 
for  our  sake  such  affliction,  such  agony  as  woman  never 
before  endured.  We  are  the  children  of  her  agony  and  of 
her  grace.  She  has  proved  her  affection  by  the  depth  of 
the  sorrows  she  has  suffered  for  our  sake,  by  the  priceless 
value  of  the  benefits  she  has  conferred.  But  above  all,  at 
this  sacred  season  when  we  commemorate  tXie  adorable 
mystery  in  which  her  share  was  so  large,  we  should  turn 
to  our  sweet  and  gentle  Mother  with  renewed  reverence 
and  love.  While  we  adore  the  Son,  the  Mother  should 
not  be  forgotten,  and  in  the  temple  of  our  hearts,  purified 
by  the  holy  sacraments  of  the  Church,  we  should  erect  for 
her  an  altar  where  we  may  offer  our  humble  homage  to  our 
glorious  Queen,  our  earnest  gratitude  to  our  munificent 
benefactress,  and  our  warmest  love  to  our  tender  Mother. 


The  Feast  of  the  Immaculate  Con- 
ception. 


The  Feast  of  the  Immacuiate  Conception  was  observed  in  the  Cathedral, 
Marlborough  Street,  Dublin,  December  8,  1876,  with  particular  devotion. 
The  sermon  was  delivered  by  Father  Burke,  who  preached  from  the 
words  : 

"  Who  js  she  that  cometh  like  unto  the  morning  rising  ?" 

IT  AY  it  please  your  eminence.  Dearly-beloved  brethren, 
■^■^  it  was  thus  that  the  inspired  one  of  the  Scripture 
described  the  coming  of  Mary  the  Mother  of  Grod.  He 
contemplated  the  sad  night  of  four  thousand  years,  and, 
looking  towards  the  Orient,  he  saw  there  a  vision  of  divine 
beauty  rising  before  him,  and  he  exclaimed  :  "  Who  is  she 
that  cometh  like  unto  the  morning  rising  ?"  That  was  the 
prophet's  vision,  and  behold  we  are  celebrating  to-day  the 
nrst  coming  of  Mary  the  Mother  of  Grod,  our  Lord  and 
Saviour  Jesus  Christ — the  first  moment  of  her  existence, 
when  she  was  conceived  in  her  mother's  womb.  Behold 
the  dawn  of  that  day  of  which  she  was  the  day-star,  the 
precursor,  and  the  promise !  Now,  observe  the  language  of 
the  inspired  one.  He  calls  her  aurora  consergens — the 
approach  or  first  dawn  of  day  springing  up.  In  the  order 
of  nature,  dearly  beloved,  the  aurora  or  dawn  gives  pro- 
mise, and  is  a  sure  harbinger  of  the  day  that  is  to  follow. 
When  a  man  who  is  keeping  the  night  watch  over  his 
flocks  and  herds  in  the  fields,  or  when  the  sailor  who 
stands  during  the  night  watches  at  the  wheel,  or  when 


432        The  Feast  of  the  Immaculate  Conception. 

any  person  who  has  to  keep  a  vigil  during  the  darkness 
turns  his  eyes  at  the  approach  of  day  towards  the  eastern 
horizon,  he  gathers  with  truth  from  the  dawning  of  the 
morning  what  manner  of  day  is  to  come.  K,  my  dear 
brethren,  on  that  eastern  horizon  he  sees  the  early  dawn 
and  the  breaking  of  the  orient  light  crossed  by  angry 
clouds,  if  he  sees  there  marks  of  atmospheric  disturban- 
ces, then  he  concludes  that  the  day  will  be  stormy  ;  but  if, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  dawn  comes  mild  and  pure,  and 
the  day-star  rises  limpid  and  beaming  with  undisturbed 
light — if  he  notes  no  cloud  across  the  eastern  vista — if  no 
sign  of  angry  atmosphere  be  there — then  is  such  a  dawn 
the  promise  of  a  day  unclouded  in  the  beauty  and  wealth 
of  its  sunshine.  Even  so  is  it  in  the  order  of  grace.  The 
dealings  of  God  with  man  were  divided  into  two  great 
epochs  or  days.  The  first  is  the  day  of  Adam,  of  whom 
the  apostle  says  :  *'The  first  man  of  the  earth  and  earth- 
ly." The  second  great  epoch  is  the  day  of  Jesus  Christ, 
"the  Second  Man,  who  was  from  heaven  and  heavenly." 
Of  others  the  apostle  makes  no  mention.  He  divides  our 
history  into  those  two  great  days,  and  thus  each  had  an 
aurora,  or  dawning,  in  a  woman.  As  soon  as  we  turn  to 
the  first  historical  evidence  of  our  race — when  we  turn  to 
the  East — which  tells  us  of  the  origin  of  our  being,  there 
do  we  see  the  aurora  or  dawn  of  our  history  in  Eve.  But 
scarcely  does  she  appear  upon  the  horizon  when  we  see 
hanging  and  clustering  around  her  head  the  angry  clouds 
of  God' s  bitter  vengeance,  and  we  hear  besides  the  voice 
of  that  angry  God  in  tones  of  condemnation  and  reproach, 
like  the  mutterings  of  the  morning  thunder,  and  we  are 
struck  with  terror  to  think  how  awful  the  day  must  be 
that  was  ushered  in  with  so  much  promise  of  storm  and  of 
anger.  And  sad  surely  that  day  has  been — a  day  of  earth, 
a  day  of  sin  and  of  darkness,  of  which  the  propliet  mourn- 
fully exclaims :  "  There  is  no  truth,  there  is  no  knowledge 
of  God  left  in  the  land  ;  cursing  and  lying,  theft  and  adul- 
tery have  prevailed,  and  behold  !  blood  has  touched  blood." 
But,  my  dear  brethren,  the  second  day  is  approaching,  the 


The  Feast  of  tre  Immaculate  Conception.        423 

day  that  will  bring  the  "Man  from  heaven,  heavenly" — 
the  day  that  will  behold  God  and  man  united  in  one  Di- 
vine Person,  united  in  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ 
—the  day  that  will  behold  an  unclouded  age,  darkness  dis- 
sipated, the  reign  of  sin  destroyed,  and  the  mild  sway  of 
God' s  love  and  grace  inaugurated— the  day  that  will  behold 
the  terrible  decree  against  man  erased,  the  bolts  of  heaven 
withdrawn,  and  the  golden  portal  opened  wide  to  us  all. 
And  this  day— this  day  of  peace,  of  happiness,  and  of 
benediction— had  its  aurora  and  dawn,  and  that  dawn  was 
in  Mary,  the  Immaculate  Mother  of  the  Man-God.  Oh  I 
how  different  from  the  coming  of  the  first  mother.  Eve. 

Mary  came  in  all  the  calmness  and  gentleness,  in  all 
the  splendor,  and  in  all  the  purity  of  the  highest  grace  and 
the  highest  love  of  God.  No  cloud  of  anger  hangs  over  her 
head,  no  lowering  shadow  of  divine  wrath  falls  before  her. 
The  hereditary  and  traditional  sin  is  stayed  by  the  omni- 
potent hand  of  Him  who  redeemed  her  ;  she  is  untainted 
by  the  breath  or  thought  of  sin.  She  rises  to  tell  the  world 
that  the  sun  of  eternal  salvation  is  about  to  break  upon  us ; 
that  the  darkness  of  ages  is  to  be  dispelled  for  ever  ;  that 
the  true  King  is  coming  to  take  up  his  own,  to  secure  his 
own  inheritance  in  the  hearts  and  love  of  man.  And  she 
rose  calmly  and  serenely,  shining  like  a  lovely  morning 
star,  with  a  brightness  not  indeed  her  own,  but  a  brightness 
coming  to  her  from  the  Sun  which  follows  in  her  wake — 
the  brightness  of  divine  grace,  transcending  all  the  forms  of 
divine  beauty  that  ever  God's  grace  took  in  any  of  His 
creatures  in  heaven  or  on  earth — a  brightness  and  a  glory 
of  divine  grace  surpassing  the  united  glory  and  the  united 
brightness  of  all  whom  God  has  ever  honored,  or  intends 
to  honor,  in  His  holy  kingdom  ;  and  all  this  in  the  one  grace 
of  her  glorious  Immaculate  Conception — a  grace  supreme 
indeed,  for  it  brought  with  it  to  Mary  perfect  sinlessness. 

1^0  shade,  no  thought  of  sin  was  ever  allowed  to  ap- 
proach to  the  Virgin,  either  as  a  personal  sin  or  as  an 
hereditary  sin.  A  supreme  grace  of  perfect  sinlessness 
carried  Mary  at  once  to  the  very  climax  and  summit  of  all 


424        The  Feast  of  the  Immaculate  Conception. 

that  every  other  saint  of  God  aspired  to  in  life  or  in  death  ; 
for  every  form  of  holiness  in  man  or  angel  aspires  as  to  its 
perfection  to  perfect  sinlessness,  and  consequently  to  per- 
fect acceptability  before  God.  When  they  attained  to 
this  then  were  all  their  aspirations  achieved.  To  this, 
therefore,  tend  all  the  graces  of  earth,  to  perfect  sinless- 
ness. To  this  tend  all  the  merciful  purgating  punishment 
pronounced  even  upon  the  elect  of  God — to  perfect  sinless- 
ness— and  it  is  this,  the  climax  and  perfection  of  virtue, 
that  is  crowned  in  heaven  by  the  rewarding  hand  of  an  all- 
just  God.  Mary  began  with  this  perfect  sinlessness.  The 
Lord  hath  cast  the  foundations  of  her  -upon  the  summits 
of  the  holy  mountains.  This  supreme  grace  was  thus 
supreme,  not  only  in  its  excellence,  but  in  that  it  was  a 
solitary  grace.  A  thing  may  be  of  no  intrinsic  value,  but 
if  it  be  unique — if  there  be  nothing  like  it  in  the  world — 
from  that  very  fact  springs  its  preciousness  and  value. 
Now,  of  all  the  children  of  Adam,  of  all  those  who  were 
ever  born  into  this  world,  of  all  who  ever  will  be  born  into 
it  to  the  end  of  t^me,  of  all  those  who  shall  ever  enter  into 
the  kingdom  of  God,  Mary  alone  was  conceived  without 
the  taint  of  original  sin.  In  that  universal  corruption 
which,  like  a  mighty  river,  proceeded  from  the  sin  of  Adam 
for  all  his  posterity.  Almighty  God  took  her  into  His 
own  hands,  enshrined  her  in  the  sanctity  and  omnipotence 
of  His  own  divine  counsels  and  His  own  heart,  and  there 
kept  Mary  preserved  from  every  taint  or  stain  of  sin.  It 
is,  moreover,  a  grace  supreme,  in  that  it  contained  the 
germ  of  all  other  graces  that  crowned  her  life.  All  those 
terrible  consequences  of  original  sin — the  promptings  of 
unruly  passions,  the  uprising  of  all  foul  desires,  the  loud 
calls  of  a  base  and  fallen  nature — all  these  things  were  un- 
known to  Mary.  The  other  saints  have  become  saints  by 
overcoming  themselves.  Mary  became  the  saint  of  saints, 
fitted,  as  St.  Thomas  says,  to  be  the  Mother  of  God,  by 
simply  taking  up  her  enormous  graces  and  corresponding 
with  them.  And  now,  perhaps,  it  must  suggest  itself  to 
you  or  to  me  that  whilst  this  grandest  of  all  God's  crea- 


The  Feast  of  the  Immaculate  Conception.        425 

tures  is  the  object  of  our  admiration — for  surely  we  must 
admire  that  whicli  God  made  so  fair  and  noble  ;  nay,  more, 
we  are  called  upon  to  admire  lier,  for  the  Scripture  says  : 
"  God  is  wonderful  in  His  saints  ;  praise  ye  the  Lord  in 
His  saints  as  in  the  very  firmament  of  His  power" — that 
whilst  we  are  thus  admiring  her,  and  giving  God  thanks 
frequently  for  all  He  has  done  for  her  and  through  her  for 
us,  the  very  greatness  of  her  graces  may  seem  to  lift  her 
so  far  above  us  that  we  find  no  example,  no  lesson  for  our- 
selves in  the  life  and  graces  of  Mary.  But  it  is  not  so. 
She  is  not  only  admirable,  but  she  is  imitable,  and  I  would 
fail  in  my  duty  to  you  to-day  if  I  were  simply  to  place  the 
Blessed  Mother  of  God  before  you  as  an  object  for  your 
admiration  without  also  endeavoring  to  show  you  how  the 
least  and  humblest  amongst  us  may  imitate  Mary,  and  do 
in  our  own  sphere  and  measure  what  she  has  done  for  God. 
In  order  to  show  this  I  take  the  graces  of  Jesus  Christ,  first 
of  all,  as  the  triumph  of  God  in  Mary,  and,  secondly,  as 
the  delight  of  God  in  Mary.  As  to  the  triumph  of  God  in 
Mary^  it  is  worthy  of  remark  that  Almighty  God,  who 
makes  all  things  fair  and  acceptable  to  Himself,  and  who, 
in  the  beginning,  looked  upon  all  that  He  had  made  and 
saw  that  it  was  good,  still,  out  of  respect  for  His  own  laws, 
out  of  respect  for  the  intelligence  and  freedom  of  will  with 
which  He  endows  His  creatures  as  their  very  nature,  per- 
mits the  devil  to  spoil  His  works,  and  in  a  great  measure 
to  frustrate  His  own  designs.  It  would  seem  to  us  an  in- 
comprehensible matter  how  the  Almighty  God  could  per- 
mit this,  were  we  not  to  remember  that  intelligence  and 
freedom  are  the  nature  of  man  ;  that  if  he  chooses  to  per- 
vert his  intelligence  and  abuse  his  freedom,  Almighty  God 
has  sucli  respect  for  the  nature  of  His  creatures,  and  for 
His  laws,  that  He  will  permit  that  abuse  rather  than  save 
man  by  infringing  upon  the  essential  character  of  his  na- 
ture and  freedom.  But  though  God  has  thus  at  times 
allowed  His  enemy  apparently  to  prevail  against  Him, 
still  He  has  never  given  to  that  enemy  the  complete  and 
absolute  triumph.     Wherever  the  enemy  seemed  to  pre- 


426        The  Feast  of  the  Immaculate  Conception. 

vail,  God  in  some  portion  or  other  of  the  battlefield  as- 
serted His  own  victory,  and  put  His  enemy  to  confusion. 
Thus,  although  the  iniquity  of  man  spread  all  over  the 
earth  at  t^ie  time  of  the  first  deluge,  yet  still  the  Almighty 
God  preserved  Noe  and  his  family,  making  them  pure 
and  holy  and  good,  and  so  our  humanity  was  saved 
through  them  in  the  ark. 

Afterwards,  when  God  opened  the  heavens  once  more 
to  rain  down  living  lire  on  Sodom  and  Gomorrali,  amidst 
the  universal  iniquity  Lot  and  his  family  were  found  pure 
and  worthy  to  entertain  the  angels  of  God,  and  so  were 
saved.  In  after- times,  too,  when  idolatry  spread  over  the 
land,  when  every  one  bowed  down  to  idols,  do  we  not  in- 
variably find  some  one  man  or  one  family  preserving  the 
worship  of  the  true  God,  and  His  or  their  own  purity  and 
innocence ;  and  even  in  the  dispersion  of  the  children  of 
the  Lord  the  Lord  asserted  Himself  in  Tobias,  nor  did  He 
ever  permit  His  enemy  a  universal  triumph.  So,  dearly 
beloved,  when  the  devil  tempted  our  first  parents  and  pre- 
vailed against  chem,  and  in  their  sin  succeeded  in  tainting 
and  poisoning  the  very  fountain-head  of  all  human  nature, 
it  would  seem,  indeed,  that  for  years,  at  least,  he  bad 
asserted  himself  in  a  complete  triumph  over  the  Almighty 
God.  Adam  and  Eve  fell — all  humanity  falls  with  them. 
Never  shall  child  be  conceived  in  its  mother's  womb  with- 
out the  taint  of  sin  ;  never  again  shall  a  human  being  be- 
hold heaven  save  as  a  penitent,  with  the  taint  of  original 
sin  at  least  once  incurred  ;  never  again  can  a  creature  arise 
to  show'the  angels  in  heaven,  and  man  on  earth,  what  man 
would  have  been  if  God's  work  had  not  been  utterly 
spoiled  in  him.  But  did  God  give  this  great  triumph  to 
His  enemy  ?  Oh  !  no  ;  He  asserted  Himself — He  preserved 
one  unpolluted,  one  unspoiled  specimen  of  that  humanity 
which  so  lovingly  He  had  created,  and  that  one  was  the 
triumph  of  God.  Mary  was  always  the  tnumph  of  God. 
"Behold!  a  woman  shall  cnish  tiie  serpent's  head  with  her 
heel."  "I  saw  a  great  sign — a  woman  clothed,  with  the 
sun  and  the  moon  beneath  her  feet,  and  around  her  head 


The  Feast  of  the  Immaculate  Conception.        427 

a  crown  of  twelve  stars  " — and  before  her  the  enemies  of 
God  were  drawn  out.  The  aurora  conser gens— the  spring- 
ing up  of  the  day — came  to  pass  in  Mary's  Immaculate 
Conception  ;  and  yet,  dearly  beloved,  even  here  is  the  ob- 
ject of  our  imitation,  for  every  one  amongst  us  in  his  or 
her  own  sphere,  no  matter  how  humble  it  may  be,  ought  to 
be,  and  with  God's  grace  will  be,  a  living  monument  of  the 
triumph  of  Almighty  God,  and  of  God's  grace  over  His 
enemy,  as  often  as  we  endeavor,  by  holy  repentance,  to 
shake  off  our  sins— as  often  as  we  say  a  prayer  heartily 
and  fervently  to  Almighty  God— as  often  as  we  turn  our 
eyes  from  that  which  might  by  suggestion  of  evil  thought 
influence  us  towards  the  commission  of  sin — in  every  such 
action  it  is  God  that  triumphs  over  His  enemy.  When  the 
Christian  man  is  able  to  put  a  constraint  upon  the  passions 
within  him,  to  defeat  the  powers  of  hell  at  work  beneath 
and  around  him,  God  triumphs  over  His  enemy.  And  God 
glories  in  this  triumph,  even  as  He  gloried  in  the  Imma- 
culate Conception  of  His  Virgin  Mother.  It  is  the  assertion 
of  the  kingdom  of  God  ;  it  is  the  telling  to  all  hell,  and  to 
all  the  enemies  of  God,  that  God  has  only  to  put  out  His 
little  finger  to  scatter  all  His  enemies — to  communicate  an 
act  of  His  divine  will  by  divine  gi-ace  to  scatter  them  to 
the  winds.  But  Mary,  in  her  Immaculate  Conception,  is 
not  only  the  triumph  of  God,  but  the  delight  of  God. 
God,  my  dearly  beloved,  loves  Himself  with  an  infinite 
love,  and  that  love,  infinite  and  eternal,  with  which  He 
loves  Himself  is  diffused  also  in  His  creatures,  and  those 
He  loves  in  proportion  as  tliey  rise  to  a  resemblance  to 
Him. 

That  resemblance  to  Himself  is  found  in  sinlessness  and 
purity — perfect  sinlessness  of  soul  and  body  ;  this  is  the 
first  great  means  by  which  His  creatures  can  rise  to  a  re- 
semblance to  that  Almighty  God  who  is  sinlessness  and 
holiness  itself.  Whenever,  therefore,  God  beholds  this, 
His  heart  rejoices,  and  this  sinlessness  is  the  delight  and 
joy  of  the  Almighty.  Therefore  it  is  that  whilst  God  loves 
all  the  just,  loves  His  angels  and  saints  in  heaven,  loves 


428        The  Feast  of  the  Immaculate  CaNCEPTioN, 

tliose  who  are  endeavoring  to  serve  Him  on  earth  with  a 
love  altogether  His  own  ;  yet  because  Mary  gathered  to 
her  own  soul  a  more  perfect  holiness  than  all,  therefore 
Mary,  more  than  all  the  saints,  was  the  delight  of  God — 
delit  a  Del.  He  speaks  to  us  in  Scripture  of  the  delight 
He  feels  when  He  beholds  virtue  and  grace  triumphant, 
and  therefore  she  is  especially  "the  delight  of  God."  In 
this  also  may  we  imitate  her.  Oh  !  what  untold  conso- 
lation to  think  that  we  also  can  give  joy  and  gladness  to 
the  heart  of  God.  "Unto  my  heart  thou  slialt  give  joy 
and  gladness."  What  a  consolation  to  think  that  even 
the  least  of  us  can  return  to  God  His  own  gifts.  Out  of 
Thine  own,  and  that  which  Thou  hast  given  us,  we  give 
Thee  back  again.  Thou  hast  given  us  joy  and  gladness, 
and  we,  O  Lord,  will  give  joy  and  gladness  to  Thee.  O 
dearly  belovt?d  !  let  us  put  away  our  sins,  and  let  us  enter 
on  this  holy  time  determined  and  prepared  to  meet  our 
new-born  Saviour  with  hearts  inflamed  with  love  for  Him, 
cleansed  with  repentance,  that  He  may  be  born  into  the 
soul  of  every  one  of  us — by  cleansing  our  souls  from  sin. 
There  is  joy  in  heaven  for  one  sinner  that  doth  penance, 
and  the  joy  in  heaven  begins  in  the  heart  of  God  Himself ; 
therefore  out  of  our  very  misery,  humiliation,  and  folly 
can  we  find  material  to  make  ourselves  the  deliglit  and 
joy  of  God.  In  these  two  great  respects,  therefore,  is  the 
Immaculate  Virgin  imitable.  We  can,  m}^  dear  brethren, 
behold  another  Mary  to  guide  us  in  the  repression  of  our 
passions,  in  asserting  the  triumph  of  divine  grace — another 
Mary  to  guide  us  by  tlie  joy  and  gladness  which  our  re- 
pentance and  true  contrition  will  assuredly  give.  Second 
only  to  the  joy  with  which  He  contemplates  perfect  purity 
— and  great  is  the  joy  of  God  to-day  when  He  contemplates 
the  Blessed  Virgin  in  her  Immaculate  Conception — second 
only  to  this  was  the  unction  that  swelled  the  divine  heart 
of  Jesus  Christ  when  He  looked  down  at  Mary  Magdalene, 
and  when  her  first  tear  fell  upon  His  sacred  feet.  Oh !  if 
we  cannot  give  Him  the  perfect  joy  of  perfect  purify,  per- 
iect  charity,  perfect  goodness,  at  least  let  us  give  Him  the 


The  Feast  of  the  Immaculate  ConceptiC(N.        429 

joy  of  perfect,  true  repentance,  and  so  rise  in  some  degree 
towards  the  perfection  of  the  Mother  of  God.  Let  us  do 
that,  my  brethren,  and  this  will  be  for  us  tlie  aurora  cen- 
ser gens — upspriuging  and  dawn  of  the  day  that  shall  know 
no  ending — of  the  day  in  that  bright  heaven,  that  king- 
dom, in  which  the  sun  and  lamp  is  God — the  day  that 
shall  never  know  an  evening — the  day  spent  in  the  con- 
templation of  the  infinite  loveliness  of  our  Lord  and 
Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  and  in  sight  of  Mary  the  Immacu- 
late Mother  of  God. 


^ 


The  Stations  of  the  Cross. 


In  this  discourse  Father  Burke  has  treated  with  great  power  a  subject  of 
deep  and  singular  interest.  It  was  delivered  in  the  Church  of  S8. 
Augustine  and  John,  Thomas  Street,  Dublin,  in  aid  of  the  fund  for  the 
Stations  of  the  Cross. 

"  There  stood  by  the  cross  of  Jesus,  Mary,  His  mother,  and  the  other  Marj"  ; 
words  taken  from  the  Gospel  of  St.  John. 

\rOU  know,  dearly  beloved,  that  all  we  have  worth  esti- 
-'-  mating  in  this  world,  and  absolutely  all  that  we  hope 
for  in  eternity,  is  derived  by  us  from  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 
You  know,  moreover,  that  by  His  sufferings  and  death  He 
not  only  took  away  the  sin  of  man,  washing  it  out  in  His 
own  precious  blood.  He  not  only  cancelled  the  handwrit- 
ing of  the  awful  decree  which  consigned  us  all  to  eternal 
banishment  from  God,  but  He  opened  up,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  us  all  the  treasury  of  His  Father's  kingdom  and 
His  Father's  love,  and  He  obtained  for  us,  through  the 
merits  of  His  suffering  and  passion,  every  good  and  every 
perfect  gift  that  cometh  down  from  the  Father  in  heaven. 
Now,  there  are  two  sets  of  Christians  in  this  world.  There 
are  those  who  love  to  contemplate  all  the  results  of  the 
passion  and  sufferings  of  our  Lord,  who  love  to  think  that 
He  has  taken  their  sins  upon  Himself,  as  in  fact  he  has 
done,  who  love  to  think  that  He  has  delivered  them  from 
the  slavery  of  that  old  law  which  He  accomplished  and 
abolished  in  His  own  Divine  Person,  but  who  in  their  joy- 
ous recollection  of  all  that  they  have  received  from  Him 
turn  away  deliberately  from  the  contemplation  of  the  suf- 
ferings and  the  death  and  the  humilation  and  the  sorrows 

480 


The  Stations  of  the  Cross.  431 

by  which  they  obtain  from  the  Almighty  God  so  many 
good  and  glorious  gifts.  They  are  those  who,  calling 
themselves  Christians,  and  papofessing  a  belief  in  Christ,  do 
not  belong  to  the  Catholic  Cnurch.  To  those  the  feast  of 
Christmas  and  Good  Friday  is  all  the  same,  an  equal  re- 
joicing. They  rejoice  on  Christmas  day  that  a  child  is 
born  who  is  to  redeem  them,  but  they  will  not  enter  the 
stable  nor  contemplate  the  child's  sufferings  and  humilia- 
tions ;  they  call  that  superstitious.  On  Good  Friday  they 
stand  indeed  under  the  shadow  of  the  rood,  but  they  will 
not  lift  up  their  eyes  to  Him  that  suffers  there,  but,  like  the 
soldiers  who  were  casting  their  dice  at  His  feet  and  rejoic- 
ing that  he  had  left  them  a  few  garments,  so  they  cast  and 
shuffle  their  dice  of  mutual  congratulation  under  the  cross, 
whilst  they  are  rejoicing  at  what  they  have  obtained  by 
those  sufferings.  They  refuse  to  contemplate  them,  much 
less  to  sympathize  with  them. 

But,  dearly  beloved,  there  is  another  class  of  Christians 
in  this  world,  and  they  are  the  children  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  which  was  founded  by  the  Son  of  God,  dowered 
vvdth  His  eternal  dower  of  truth  and  of  divine  grace,  sanc- 
tified by  tlie  blood  that  fell  upon  her  head  as  she  stood  at 
the  foot  of  the  cross,  looking  on  fearlessly,  though  with 
agonizing  eyes,  and  she  exclaims,  like  Sophonias  of  old  : 
"  Oh  !  Thou  art  a  spouse  of  blood  to  me  this  day,  and  our 
espousals  are  consecrated  by  sufferings."  And  for  these, 
the  children  of  the  Church,  the  passion  and  the  sufferings 
of  the  Son  of  God  are  a  daily  theme  proposed  to  them  by 
their  holy  mother  to  be  the  subject  of  their  daily  thoughts. 

Is  it  not  strange,  dearly  beloved,  that  wherever  we  turn 
in  a  Catholic  church  something  or  other  reminds  us  of  the 
sufferings  of  Christ  ?  Over  all  her  altars  we  see  the  cruci- 
fix. It  would  be  a  mortal  sin  for  one  of  her  priests  to 
celebrate  the  Mass  unless  the  image  of  the  Crucified  were 
there,  raised  up  before  him,  that  whilst  he  commemorated 
the  sorrows  he  may  look  upon  that  which  will  remind  him 
of  the  original.  The  Church  of  God  loves  constantly  to 
commemorate  the  passion  and  sufferings  of  our  Lord,  and 


432  Tmh  Stations  of  the  Cross. 

when  tlie  day  of  days  comes  which  brings  back  the  hour 
that  beheld  Him  luised  up  on  Calvary,  oh  !  all  is  grief  and 
sorrow  and  desolation  in  thejpiiurch ;  no  light  must  glim- 
mer upon  her  altars,  the  very  lamp  of  her  sanctuary  is 
extinguished,  as  if  put  out  by  the  tears  of  sorrow  that  have 
fallen  upon  the  perennial  flame  ;  all  is  drajjed  in  the  deep- 
est black,  all  speaks  of  sorrow,  of  the  broken  heart,  of  the 
empty  house,  of  joy  departed — all  brings  as  powerfully  as 
the  senses  can  before  the  minds  of  the  faithful  the  suffer- 
ings and  the  desolation  of  the  Son  of  God.  And  now,  it 
may  be  asked,  why  does  the  Church  of  God  put  this  sor- 
rowful view  before  us,  rather  than  the  joyful  ?  Surely 
our  Lord  has  gained  for  us  everything  by  His  suffer- 
ings ;  why  should  we  not,  therefore,  consider  our  own 
gain  with  joy,  rather  than  consider  His  sufferings  with 
sorrow?  I  answer,  dearly  beloved,  that  the  Church  of 
God,  in  this  as  in  every  other  spirit  that  animates  her 
devotions  as  well  as  judges  her  dogmata — the  Church  of 
God,  I  say,  in  this  is  moved  by  the  mind  of  God  on  the 
one  hand  and  the  nature  of  man  on  the  other.  The  mind 
of  God  is  clearly  put  before  us.  He  will  not  have  ns  be 
forgetful  of  what  He  has  suffered  for  our  sakes.  Christ 
our  Lord  never  dreamed  of  such  forgetfulness.  He  will 
not  permit  it.  When  He  instituted  the  greatest  of  all  His 
mysteries  and  performed  the  greatest  of  all  His  miracles — 
namely,  the  mystery  and  the  miracle  of  His  own  Divine 
Presence  in  the  Blessed  Eucharist — He  expressly  tells  us 
that  He  did  this  in  order  that  the  memory  of  His  sufferings 
and  of  His  i^assion  should  never  i)ass  away  nor  be  for- 
gotten. 

When  He  had  changed  the  bread  into  His  own  most 
sacred  body  He  declared:  "This  body  is  about  to  be 
broken  and  given  up  for  you"  ;  and  when  he  took  the 
chalice  and  changed  the  wine  into  His  own  most  precious 
blood  He  declared  to  them:  "This  is  the  blood  that  is 
about  to  be  shed  for  many  unto  the  remission  of  sins." 
This  is  not  a  feast  of  joy,  but  a  commemoration  of  suffer^ 
ings.   The  mind  of  the  Son  of  God  Himself  was  perpetually 


The  Stations  of  the  Cross.  4o3 

engaged  in  the  contemplation  of  His  own  sniferings,  of 
His  own  i)assion.  Tlie  word  of  the  prophet  is :  '  My  grief 
and  my  sorrow  are  always  before  me  " — "  Dolor  mens  in 
conspectu  meo  semper.''''  As  the  Child  of  Nazareth  grew 
from  childhood  into  boyhood,  from  boyhood  into  man- 
hood, He  grew  only  to  the  fulness  of  His  age  for  the  pur- 
pose of  suffering  and  of  agony  and  of  sorrow,  and  the  thing 
was  always  before  His  eyes.  So  did  this  suffering  occupy, 
not  only  the  mind  of  the  Father  in  heaven,  who  saw  in 
them  not  only  satisfaction  to  His  justice,  but  they  also 
occupied  the  mind  of  God  made  man  upon  the  earth,  who 
dwelt  constantly  upon  the  contemplation  of  them  ;  and  so 
also  it  was  with  Mary  His  Mother.  In  the  first  days  of 
the  fulness  of  her  joy,  when  we  may  well  imagine  that  no 
shadow  of  sorrow  could  fall  upon  the  brightness  of  her 
delight,  when  she  brought  her  child  into  the  temple  that 
she  might  give  him  to  God,  and  then  purchase  him  back 
again  from  God,  as  her  first-born,  by  paying  for  him  the 
little  tribute  of  two  turtle  doves,  Simeon,  the  high- priest, 
said  to  her:  "Thou  art  the  mother  rejoicing  in  a  son  of 
whom  David  spoke  of  old,  but  I  say  unto  thee  that  this 
child  is  raised  up  for  a  sign,  that  shall  be  contradicted ; 
that  thy  soul  the  sword  of  sorrow  shall  pierce  through 
and  through,  that  the  thoughts  of  many  hearts  may  be 
revealed."  And  the  Evangelist  tells  us  that  Mary,  having 
received  her  prophetic  message  of  sorrow,  laid  it  up  in  her 
heart.  "And  Mary,"  says  the  Evangelist:  "laid  up  all 
these  things  in  her  heart."  And  from  that  hour  until  she 
saw  the  mystery  fulfilled  the  passion  and  the  suffering  of 
her  Divine  Son  were  ever  present  to  her  mind.  But  it  is 
not  only,  dearly  beloved,  that  the  Church  interprets  the 
Word  of  God,  but  she  also  interprets  the  deepest  feelings 
of  the  heart  of  man.  And  now  I  must  appeal  to  you  not 
so  much  in  the  language  of  Scripture,  nor  of  authority, 
but  in  the  language  of  plain,  common  reason  and  ex- 
perience. Suffering  is  the  test  of  love.  Take  the  mother 
that  loves  her  only-begotten  child  with  all  those  depths  of 
love  which  only  a  mother' s  heart  can  know.     As  long  as 


434  The  Stations  of  the  Cross. 

the  child  is  well,  in  rude  health,  as  long  as  he  is  able  to 
move  about  freely  around  her,  no  matter  how  deepJy  she 
loves  him,  she  never  can  test  or  know  the  depth  of  her  own 
love.  But  a  day  comes  when  the  fair  blooming  child  is 
smitten  with  disease,  and  now  his  mother  sees  him  under 
the  doctor's  knife,  or  writhing  in  agony  which  cannot  be 
explained,  much  less  relieved  ;  then,  and  only  then,  for  the 
first  time  do  the  hidden  and  deeper  depths  of  her  love 
well  up  and  be  moved  within  her  ;  then,  and  only  then,  she 
knows  in  the  agony  of  her  anxiety  how  great  is  her  love 
for  the  little  suflFering  babe  before  her.  If  you  had  a 
friend,  a  friend  who  is  dear  to  you,  a  friend  whose  voice  is 
music  in  your  ears,  the  very  sight  of  whom  is  a  light  to 
your  eyes  and  a  joy  in  your  heart,  a  friend  whom  you  have 
tested  in  a  thousand  ways,  whose  friendship  has  never  failed 
you  when  you  wanted  it  most,  whose  voice  has  always 
cheered  and  sustained  you,  whose  hand  and  whose  heart 
were  ever  open  to  you,  whose  very  heart  was  yours — you 
love  him,  of  course  you  love  him,  but  you  do  not  know  the 
depth  of  your  own  love  ;  it  is  not  whilst  you  are  receiving 
benefits  from  him,  it  is  not  whilst  you  are  rejoicing  in  his 
company  that  you  can  ever  sound  the  depth  of  your  own 
love  ;  but  when  the  hand  of  death  comes  in  and  removes 
him,  and  the  loved  face  is  seen  no  more,  and  the  sound  of 
the  cheering  voice  is  heard  no  more,  and  all  that  you  so 
loved  and  prized  and  could  find  in  no  other  is  gone  in  him, 
then,  oh !  it  is  then  that  the  heart  of  man  feels  in  the 
depths  of  his  sorrow  how  deep  his  love,  and  hen(?e  there  is 
no  more  common  saying  amongst  men  than  when  a  friend 
dies  and  is  taken  away  from  them  to  say  to  each  other : 
*' Well,  I  never  knew  how  much  I  cared  for  liim  until  I 
lost  him."  Why  is  it  said :  Nil  de  mortuis  nil  nisi 
honum — let  nothing  be  said  about  the  dead  except  what  is 
good  ?  "\Vhy,  because  as  a  rule  love  asserts  itself  in  sorrow, 
and  the  failings  and  the  faults  of  the  deceased  one  are  for- 
gotten in  the  love  which  remembers  only  his  virtues  and 
his  pci-fections ;  and  this  is  the  nature  of  man,  and  God 
Himself  recognizes  this,  for  He  makes  suffering  in  the 


The  Stations  of  the  Cross.  435 

Scripture  the  test  of  love  and  death. ;  it  is  the  climax  of 
sufferings,  and  is  precisely  what  He  has  taken  by  the 
mouth  of  His  prophet  to  compare  with  love  to  say  :  "Love 
is  as  strong  as  death." 

When,  therefore,  brethren,  we  recollect  that  we  are  the 
children  of  the  kingdom  and  the  children  of  the  new  law, 
that  we  are  called  not  to  a  law  of  fear  but  of  love,  that  we 
have  received  the  spirit  not  of  "  bondage  unto  fear,"  says 
St.  Paul,  but  as  of  children  crying,  "Abba,  Father,"  when 
we  consider  that  love  or  charity  is  the  perfecter  of  the 
law,  when  we  consider  that  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord,  in  re- 
turn for  all  that  He  has  done  and  suffered,  only  demands 
the  reward  of  our  love,  saying  to  us  in  the  language  of 
Scripture:   "O  my  son!  give  me  thy  heart,"  what  won- 
der, then,  that  the  Church  should  put  ever  before  our  eyes 
and  before  our  thoughts  these  deep  and  terrible  sufferings 
of   the  Son  of   Grod  in  His  passion    and   His   death,   in 
order  to  stir  up  the  deeper  love  which  is  in  our  hearts,  in 
order  that  grace  may  be  helped  by  nature,  and  in  order 
that  every  one  may  find  not  only  a  test  of  his  love  but 
also  his  affection  in  his  sympathy  with  the  sufferings  of 
Jesus  Christ?    For,  dearly  beloved,  sympathy  with  our 
Divine  Lord  in  His  sufferings — or,  in  plainer  language,  de- 
votion to  the  passion  of  Jesus  Christ — is  at  once  the  coun- 
tersign of  the  children  and  the  elect  of  God,  and  their 
pious  privilege.     Ask  yourselves  now,  my  dearly  beloved, 
here — you  wiio  fill  this  church  to-day — let  each  one  ask 
himself:   "  Have  I  devotion  to  the  passion  and  sufferings 
of  Jesus  Christ  ?     Do  I  often  think  of  them  ?     Do  I  ever 
reflect  upon  the  strong  young  man,  thirty -three  years  of  age, 
in  the  full  bloom  of  His  manhood,  in  all  the  grandeur  of 
His  majestic  beauty,  stripped  of  His  clothes  on  that  early 
morning  in  the  month  of  March,  and  His  hands  taken 
rudely  and  tied  behind  His  back  to  the  pillar,  and  then 
the  cohort  of  soldiers  closing  around  Him,   every  strong 
man  with  a  sharp  scourge  in  his  hand,  scourging  Him  from 
head  to  foot,  right  and  left.     They  struck  Him  across  the 
face,  they  struck  Him  on  His  breast,  they  struck  and 


436  The  Stations  of  the  Cross. 

mangled  Him   until   His  flesli  was   torn  and   the    blood 
streamed  forth,  until  He  hung  from  that  pillar  senseless  with 
the  loss  of'blood— until  the  very  scourges,  sodden  with 
blood,  have  to  be  thrown  aside,  in  order  that  new  ropes 
may  be  taken,  still  to  injure  and  lacerate  the  broken  body  ; 
until  at  length  from  the  top  of  His  head  to  the  sole  of  His 
foot  there  is  not  a  sound  place  in  Him.      The  very  Virgin 
Mother  who  bore   Him  could   scarcely   recognize  in  the 
figure  streaming  with  blood  the  form  of  her  fair  Son.     Do 
you  ever  think  of  this?    Do  you  ever  think  that  after  the 
sleepless  nights,  with  the  soul  drooping  until  it  was  made 
sick  unto  death,  with  those  other  wounds  open  from  the 
interior  energy  of  His  sacred  spirit,  until  every  pore  of  His 
sacred  frame  became  a  wound  pouring  forth  blood,  that 
He  was  brought  out  in  the  early  morning,  and  seventy-two 
long,    strong  thorns  driven  into  His  head — driven  until 
they  touched  the  fevered  and  the  aching  brain,  driven 
until,  were  He  mere  man,  He  would  have  been  maddened 
by  the  agony  they  inflicted  \    Do  you  ever  reflect,   my 
children,    on   the  strong  man,  thirty-three  years  of  age, 
hanging  for  three  awful,  desperate  hoars  by  two  huge 
spikes  driven  into  His  hands  and  two  driven  through  His 
sacred  feet — hanging  out  from  that  cross,  every  throb  of 
His  heart  weaker  and  more  faint,  the  thirst  of  death  upon 
His  lips,  unable  almost  to  speak,  the  film  of  death  upon 
His   eyes,    the  streaming  blood  from  His  thorny  crown 
blinding  Him,  the  strain  upon  every  nerve  and  muscle 
breaking  His  heart  and  agonizing  Him,  the  sorrows  of  all 
the  anger  of  Heaven  piled  upon  Him  as  mountains  ?      Do 
you  ever  think  of  this  ?    Yet  I  tell  you  that  devotion  to 
all  this — for  it  is  the  Lord  God  made  man  who  endured  it 
all — the  devotion  to  all  this  is  first  of  all  the  countersign 
of  our  election,  and  it  is  also  our  best  and  our  dearest  pri- 
vilege.    The  Gign  by  which  we  may  know  whether  we  are 
the  sons  of  God  and  the  elect  of  God,  dearly  beloved,  is 
charity,  the  charit}^  of  God  which  is  revealed  through  the 
cross,     *'They  shall  liave  His  name  and  His  Father's  name 
as  a  sign  upon  their  forehead."     What  is  the  sign,  I  ask, 


The  Stations  of  the  Cross.  437 

if  not -the  sign  of  tlie  cross  that  bore  aloft  upon  its  strong 
limbs  tile  suffering  victim  for  the  sins  of  maa?  Where- 
fore St.  Paul  said:  "The  Gospel  that  I  preach,  Jesus 
Christ  crucified."  The  word  that  is  upon  my  lips,  the 
word  of  the  cross,  behold  the  true  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Wherefore,  if  any  man  would  have  it,  he  must  have  it  im- 
pressed upon  his  soul,  impressed  upon  his  forehead  and 
upon  Jjis  lips  by  devotion  to  the  passion  and  the  sufferings 
of  our  Lord.  Therefore  it  is  the  countersign  of  the  elect 
of  God.  Ic  is,  moreover,  our  greatest  privilege.  This  is 
a  great  mystery  which  I  am  about  to  propound  to  you  in 
a  few  words  as  clearly  as  may  be.  My  dearly  beloved, 
suffering,  which  must  come  sooner  or  later,  sorrow,  which, 
must  at  one  time  or  another  make  itself  felt,  and  perhaps 
often,  frequently,  is  the  lot  and  the  portion  of  every  one 
of  us.  If  any  man  thinks  that  he  can  pass  through  life  as 
through  a  pleasant  dream,  as  through  a  hall  lighted  up  by 
sunshine,  uncheckered  by  shadow,  he  deceives  himself. 

There  is  no  life  for  sin  or  the  sinner  without  suffering 
and  sorrow.  But  the  Almighty  God  has  given  us  this 
comfort  in  our  sufferings,  the  greatest  comfort  that  can  be 
— He  has  given  us  the  privilege  of  comparing  our  sorrows 
with  those  of  His  own  Divine  Son  and  of  the  sacred  Virgin 
Mother  that  bore  that  Son  into  this  earth,  and  of  all  those 
whom  He  loved  and  whom  He  chastened,  that  out  of  the 
depths  of  our  faith  we  may  derive  strong  help  in  our  hour 
of  trial  and  great  consolation  in  our  hour  of  trouble.  For 
unto  the  Blessed  Virgin  the  Church  applies  the  words  of 
Scripture  :  "  All  you  who  pass  the  way,"  she  says,  "come 
and  see  if  there  be  sorrow  like  unto  my  sorrow."  She 
does  not  speak  to  those  who  pass  the  way  of  joy,  she  does 
not  speak  to  those  who  come  with  laughing  eyes  and  re- 
joicing words,  who  have  never  known  sorroAv  ;  with  them 
she  has  nothing  in  common,  for  she  is  the  Queen  of  Mar- 
tyrs and  the  Mother  of  Sorrows.  But  it  is  to  those  who 
are  in  grief  that  she  speaks.  "  All  you  who  walk  the  way 
of  tears,  all  you  whose  path  is  strewn  with  thorns,  all  you 
who  carry  the  heavy  weight  of  a  broken  heart  within  your 


438  ThEmStations  of  the  Qross. 

bosom,  come,  oh  !  come  unto  this  mountain  of  sorrow  and 
compare  your  sorrow  unto  mine.  See  if  there  was  ever  a 
child  like  unto  Him  whom  I  beheld  agonizing  and  com- 
plaining in  my  ears  of  his  death-like  thirst,  and  I  could 
not  open  my  breast  or  hand  to  relieve  Him.  See  if  there 
be  sorrow  like  unto  this."  It  is  true  the  Blessed  Virgin  in 
that  hour  of  sorrow  knew  well  how  holy  and  necessary 
these  sufferings  were.  Oh!  yes,  we  all  know  that,  and 
any  one  amongst  you  who  has  ever  sat  by  the  bedside  of  a 
suffering  and  dying  friend  also  knows  how  good  and  salu- 
tary and  necessary  tliese  sufferings  were,  for  "  those  whom 
God  loves  He  chastens." 

But  tell  m.e  how  much  did  that  knowledge  avail  to 
lighten  the  weight  of  your  grief  ;  did  you  not  grieve  all 
the  same  when  you  saw  the  face  distorted,  the  look  of 
agony  in  tlie  dying  eyes,  the  brow  clammy  with  the  per- 
spiration of  death,  faintly  looking  for  some  friend  to  give 
relief,  when  you  heard  the  heavy,  labored  breath  of  that 
breast  which  was  so  soon  to  be  silenced  by  death — oh  ! 
what  then,  though  you  knew  tliat  those  sufferings  were 
good  and  necessary,  what  relief  did  they  biing  to  you 
when  in  your  love  you  were  unable  to  help  them  ?  And 
now  I  say  unto  you  that  it  is  one  of  the  principal  reasons 
for  which  the  holy  Catholic  Church  puts  up  in  all  her 
churches  the  commemoration  of  the  passion  of  our  Lord 
and  His  sufferings  that  those  who  are  steeped  in  sorrow, 
that  those  who  are  afflicted  and  in  suffering  may  come  in 
and  find  some  consolation  in  viewing  the  greater  Calvary 
and  the  grander  sorrows  of  Mary.  Moreover,  these  devo- 
tions to  the  passion  are  not  only  the  privilege  and  the 
refuge  of  the  suffering  heart,  but  they  are  also  the  strong- 
est arguments  of  our  faith.  It  is  as  necessary  to  believe  in 
the  humanity  of  our  Lord  as  it  is  to  believe  in  His  divinity. 
It  is  easy  to  believe  in  either  one  or  the  other  when  that  one 
is  exalted  and  shows  itself.  It  is  as  easy  for  us  to  believe 
in  the  divinity  of  our  Lord,  as  it  was  for  St.  Peter  to  be- 
lieve when  he  saw  Him  shine  like  unto  the  sun  upon  Mount 
Horeb,  and  when  he  cast  himself  down  in  an  ecstasy  of 


The  Stations  of  the  Cross.  439 

faith  whicli  was  almost  changed  into  a  vision,  and  said  what 
h(^  afterwards  said  in  lieaven:  "  Loid,  it  is  good  for  us  to 
be  here."  It  was  easy  for  him  to  confess  His  divinity. 
So,  in  like  manner,  it  is  easy  to  believe  and  confess  in  His 
manhood,  in  its  reality,  in  its  true  existence  when  you  find 
Him  dying,  nailed  to  the  cross,  looking  down  to  the  earth, 
and  saying  to  His  friend  :  "  O  friend  !  take  this  poor  af- 
flicted woman  and  be  a  child  to  her  ;  she  is  your  Mother"; 
and  to  His  Mother :  "  O  Mother !  behold  thy  son  ;  don' t  look 
to  me  any  more,  for  I  can  do  nothing  for  you  nailed  to  the 
cross."  It  is  easy  to  believe  in  His  humanity  when  we  hear 
a  faint  murmur  come  from  His  dying  lips,  parched  with  the 
thirst  of  death  :  "I  thirst ;  will  no  one  give  me  to  drink  ? " 
And  so,  dearly  beloved,  this  holy  recollection  and  constant 
memorial  of  His  passion  typifies  the  faith,  animates  the 
hope,  but  above  all  deepens  the  love  of  the  soul  in  its  de- 
votion to  Jesus  Christ.  Far  away  in  the  west  of  Ireland, 
where  her  ancient  language  and  holy  traditions  are  most 
jealously  and  faithfully  preserved,  there  was  a  mother  who 
went  every  Friday  in  the  year,  her  growing  son  by  her 
side,  to  perform  the  Stations  of  the  Holy  Way  of  the 
Cross,  and  it  was  during  the  first  year  of  the  famine,  when 
great  misery  was  uj)on  the  land,  and  when  the  angel  of 
death  stalked  abroad  and  struck  terror  into  every  heart. 
And  this  mother  and  the  child  were  going  around  the  Sta- 
tions of  the  Cross  when  two  strangers  entered  the  Francis- 
can church. 

One  of  these,  a  Protestant,  said  to  the  other,  for  the 
woman  was  weeping  freely — she,  with  that  demonstrative- 
ness  that  belongs  to  our  genuine  race,  she  not  only  wept 
freely  but  she  sobbed  aloud — and  this  stranger  said : 
"Why  is  this  mother  weeping?"  The  other  answered: 
"She  is  weeping  over  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  over  His 
sufferings,  over  His  death."  "What!"  said  the  strange 
man,  not  a  Catholic,  "why,  it  is  nearly  two  thousand  years 
ago  since  He  suffered  and  died."  "No,"  said  the  other, 
who  was  a  Catholic,  "no,  He  dies  every  Friday  in  the 
year  before  that  mother' s  eyes,  and  she  is  weeping  over 


440  The  Stations  of  the  Cross. 

Him  as  if  she  were  amongst  those  Marys  who  stood  upon 
Calvaiy.  He  is  a  living  presence  and  a  living  reality  to 
lier,  and  she  is  teaching  her  boy  to  weep."  So  it  is.  It 
was  not  for  the  misery  that  was  around  her,  though  it  was 
great ;  it  was  not  for  her  personal  sufferings,  though  she 
had  to  suffer  with  our  people  ;  but  it  was  that  she  came  to 
the  mountain  of  sorrows,  and  there  in  the  contemplation  of 
the  miseries  of  Mary  she  measured  her  own  grief  with  that 
of  the  Virgin  Mother  and  found  that  the  greatest  sorrow 
of  life,  even  of  the  mother's  heart,  compared  with  the  sor- 
rows of  Mary,  is  but  as  a  drop  only  to  the  mighty  ocean. 
And  now,  dearly  beloved,  all  this  that  I  liave  spoken  to 
you  is  but  to  lead  your  minds  to  the  subject  for  which  we 
are  here  to-day.  You  know  that  the  fathers  of  St.  Au- 
gustine, who  have  built  this  magnificent  church — not  yet 
completed  and  in  all  beauty,  but  a  promise  of  the  perfect 
thing  which  soon  I  hope  will  gladden  our  eyes  and  make 
your  hearts  to  rejoice — have  resolved,  even  before  their 
church  bo  completed,  to  set  up  at  once  here  the  Stations 
of  the  Holy  Cross — that  is  to  say,  fourteen  elaborate  pic- 
tures in  which  all  tliat  the  pious  mind  of  the  Church 
could  conceive  or  the  deft  hand  of  the  artist  execute  will 
bring  out  before  the  eyes  of  the  faithful  the  various  stages 
of  the  passion  and  sufferings  of  our  Lord.  The  expense 
of  these  works  of  art  is  great.  Most  willingly  would  the 
good  fathers  have  them  executed  nearer  home,  most  joy- 
fully, if  they  could  only  nearer  home  produce  the  same 
thing  at  the  same  expense.  But,  bound  on  the  one  hand 
to  consult  the  requirements  of  high  art,  and  on  the  other 
hand  to  consult  their  own  modest  means,  they  were  ob- 
liged to  get  them  abroad.  But  these  stations  are  about  to 
be  erected  here,  and  much  if  not  all  will  depend  upon  the 
generosity  with  which  you  enable  the  fathers  thus  to  deco- 
rate their  church  by  your  offerings  to-day. 

You  niMv  n^k  me  what  is  the  histni  y  of  this  devotion. 
There  are  fourteen  Stations  of  the  Holy  Cross — that  is  to 
say,  fourteen  phases  of  the  suffering  and  pa-sioii  of  our 
Lord — put  before  the  faithful  for  their  cunteuipkuion  in 


The  Stations  of  the  Cross.  441 

this  devotion.  Some  of  these  are  recorded  in  the  Gospel, 
and  are  consequently  articles  of  faith ;  some  of  them  are 
recorded  only  in  the  Church' s  traditions,  and,  if  I  may  use 
the  words,  they  are  articles  not  of  Christian  faith  but  of 
Christian  love.  For  instance,  we  are  not  told  in  the  Gosi)el 
that  our  Divine  Lord  fell  three  times  under  His  cross 
whilst  He  journeyed  the  sad  Via  Dolorosa  from  Herod's 
court  to  the  Hill  of  Calvary.  We  are  not  told  that  Vero- 
nica came  and  offered  Him  the  tribute  of  a  woman's  devo- 
tion, and  that  He  wiped  His  bleeding  and  x)erspiring  face 
in  the  handkerchief  which  she  gave  Him.  But  these  are 
amongst  the  earliest  traditions  of  the  Church's  love.  And 
their  history  is  simply  this  :  You  all  know  that  when  our 
Divine  Lord  and  Saviour  was  dying  He  left  His  blessed 
Virgin  Mother  in  charge  of  St.  Johu  the  Evangelist,  telling 
St.  John  to  regard  her  as  a  mother,  and  telling  her  to  re- 
gard him  as  a  son.  After  the  ascension  of  our  Lord  unto 
heaven  John  remained  some  time  in  Jerusalem  before  he 
departed  for  Ephesus  to  take  charge  of  the  churches  of 
Asia  Minor,  and  during  his  stay  in  Jerusalem,  whilst  his 
new  Mother  was  with  him,  her  delight  was  to  go  out  from 
her  house  and  silently  and  privately  to  go  over  the  scene 
of  that  Good  Friday  morning.  She  went  and  stood  before 
the  entrance  of  Pilate's  palace;  there  she  recalled  that  she 
saw  Him  crowned  with  thorns,  and  with  the  old  purple 
garments  clinging  to  Plis  wasted  and  blessed  limbs,  and 
heard  Him  proclaimed,  "Behold  the  Man."  She  followed 
from  the  Praetorian  Court  out  over  the  steps,  bending  down 
and  kissing  those  particular  marks  of  her  own,  where  she 
knew  His  blessed  feet  had  left  traces  of  His  blessed  blood. 
She  followed  Him  until  He  came  to  the  spot  where  she, 
unnble  to  restrain  herself,  came  before  Him  and  knelt 
down  and  cried  out:  "O  my  Son  !  O  my  Son!"  She 
followed  in  the  same  way  until  she  came  to  the  spot 
where  she  said  to  herself:  "  Here  I  saw  Him  waver  and 
tremble  under  the  cross,  and  I  heard  a  great  noise,  and  I 
saw  Him  fall  to  the  ground  and  that  mighty  cross  crash 
down  on  Him.     Here  I  saw  those  brutal  soldiers  lift  the 


442  The  Stations  of  the  Cross. 

cross  and  then  strike  Him  with  their  swords  until  He  rose, 
moreciead  than  alive,  to  take  once  more  upon  His  lacerated 
shoulders  that  heavy  burden." 

And  so  she  went  on  step  by  step  until  she  came  to  the 
Hill  of  Calvary,  and  there  this  brave  woman,  the  Queen  of 
Martyrs,  stood  for  three  hours  again,  and  went  through 
all  the  agony  of  her  mother's  heart.  This  was  Mary's  life, 
according  to  the  Church's  traditions,  in  Jerusalem.  And 
the  other  Mary,  the  other  Mary  who  represented  Christian 
womanhood  and  manliood,  and  Mary  of  Salome  and  the 
Magdalene,  and  the  Magdalene's  sister,  Martha,  and  other 
pious  women,  gradually  observing  their  Virgni  Mother 
going  forth  on  this  way,  went  with  her  and  mingled  their 
tears  with  hers.  Then  as  the  Church  was  gradually  spread- 
ing throughout  the  nation,  the  newly-converted  Christians 
naturally  turned  to  Jerusalem,  and  were  anxious  to  see  the 
places  where  our  Lord  had  lived  and  died,  and  they  came 
and  found  Mary  and  the  women  going  through  their  daily 
devotions,  the  Stations  of  the  Cross,  and  they  joined  them 
—Roman  senators,  the  noblest  of  the  land,  generals  of 
armies,  the  marshals  and  conquerors  of  the  world,  the 
greatest  of  Rome's  statesmen,  the  greatest  of  Greece's 
ai-tists,  painters,  and  sculptors,  bowing  down  before  the 
Motlier  of  God,  and  with  wondeiing  eyes  and  pitying 
hearts  joining  in  the  processitm  and  accompanying  Mary 
and  the  women  on  the  Via  Dolorosa.  And  the  Church 
crowned  it  with  her  indulgence,  and  Mary  departed  to 
Ephesus,  and  from  Ephesus  to  heaven  ;  but  the  devotion 
spread  on,  and  that  which  was  confined  to  Jerusalem 
was  spread  by  the  beneficence  of  the  Church,  and  wher- 
ever the  fourteen  Stations  of  the  Cross  are  erected  there 
is  a  new  Jerusalem,  a  new  Calvary  waiting  for  its  Mary, 
waiting  for  its  pious  souls  to  come  and  pour  out  at  the 
feet  of  our  Divine  Lord  the  tribute  of  an  undying  love. 
Behold  tlie  history  of  the  Stations  of  the  Cross.  And  now 
this  (levolion  is  about  to  be  raised  in  the  midst  of  us.  O 
my  friends  !  you  who  are  able  to  contribute  largely  help 
those  good  fathers  to-day,  that  you  may  have  a  consola- 


The  Stations  of  the  Cross.  443 

tion  in  life  and  at  the  hour  of  death,  and  that  the  poor 
and  the  afflicted  may  have  a  refuge  here.  For,  dearly- 
beloved,  unto  the  troubled  soul,  unto  the  sorrowing  heart, 
the  C  hurch  must  ever  be  like  the  pool  of  Bethsaida,  where, 
no  matter  what  disease  was  upon  you,  if  you  entered 
and  descended  into  its  waters  you  were  presently  relieved. 
And  so  those  who  come  into  this  church  bending  under 
their  weight  of  sorrow  must  go  forth  erect  through  the 
misery  and  the  sufferings  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  is,  therefore, 
for  them  that  I  specially  plead  when  I  ask  you  to-day  for 
the  sake  of  Him  who  suffered  and  died,  and  whose  suffer- 
ings are  thus  commemorated,  to  be  large  in  your  charity, 
and  enable  these  good  fathers,  who  are  already  all  but 
crushed  under  the  tremendous  effort  of  raising  such  a 
church  as  this,  to  give  to  that  church  its  most  necessary 
embellishments,  and  to  make  it  in  the  midst  of  you  a  Via 
Dolorosa,  leading  from  the  heart  of  every  family  in  the 
neighborliood  here,  leading  up  to  Calvary  ;  for,  brethren, 
in  the  Christian's  progress  Calvary  is  the  necessary  height 
from  which  the  soul  must  spring  to  the  Horeb  of  the  eter- 
nal heavens. 


The  Passion  of  Our  Lord. 


The  following  very  remarkable  and  beautiful  sermon  was  preached  by 
Father  Burke  in  St.  Saviour's  Church,  Dublin,  afier  Tenebi«,  ou  Good 
Friday  eveninpr,  1877.  It  is  one  of  the  most  faithful  portrayals  of  the 
passion  of  our  Lord  that  has  ever  been  given  t  i  the  world. 

■niSAR  BRETHREN:  I  suppose  that  in  every  family 
-^  among  you  there  is  a  copy  of  the  Holy  Scriptures, 
the  Bible.  The  Catholic  Cliurch  loves  that  her  children 
should  read  and  meditate  on  the  Holy  Scriptures.  It  is  a 
calumny  and  a  falsehood  to  say  that  she  is  opposed  to  the 
reading  and  the  meditating  upon  the  Word  of  God.  I 
therefore  take  it  for  granted  that  you  have  all  in  your 
houses  a  copy  of  the  Bible.  And  now  I  ask  you  when  you 
go  home  tliis  evening  or  to- morrow  morning,  v/hilst  the 
thing  is  still  fresh  in  your  memory,  to  read  the  fourth 
chapter  of  the  Fourth  Book  of  Kings.  There  are  foar 
Books  of  Kings,  and  in  the  fourth  chapter  of  the  fourth 
book  you  will  find  the  following  incident  or  fact  related : 
The  i.)rophet  Eliseus  by  his  prayer  and  his  blessing  ob- 
tained for  a  certain  woman,  a  Sunamitess,  the  gift  that  she 
should  bear  a  child,  a  son.  Great  was  the  woman's  joy  in 
the  possession  of  her  son,  but,  to  her  great  sorrow,  w^hen 
the  child  was  growing  up  strong  and  liealthy,  and  was 
assuming  the  proportions  of  manhood,  he  sickened  and 
died.  And  his  mother  came  to  the  prophet  and  implored 
him  that  he  would  restore  to  her  by  liis  prayer  the  son 
whom  he  had  obtained  for  her  by  his  prayer.  Then  the 
prophet  Eliseus  arose  and  he  went  to  the  woman's  house. 
And  now  comes  the  portion  of  the  miiucle  to  which  I  in- 

444 


The  Passion  of  Our  Lord.  445 

Vite  your  special  attention.  He  went  into  the  house  and 
he  found  the  cidld  lying  dead  ujjon  a  bed.  He  prayed  to 
the  Ahnighty  God,  and  when  he  had  prayed  he  stretched 
himself  out  upon  the  dead  child,  placing-  his  hands  upon 
the  child's  hands,  his  mouth  upon  the  boy's  mouth,  his 
eyes  upon  his  eyes,  and  his  heart  upon  the  heart  of  tlie 
dead  one.  And  thus  stretched  out,  leaning  and  lying  upon 
the  dead  child,  the  Scripture,  as  you  will  see— for  I  ask 
you  to  read  it — the  Scripture  tells  us  that  by  degrees  he 
warmed  the  llesh  of  the  dead  child.  But  the  child  did 
not  rise  to  life  ;  he  remained  dead,  though  warmed  by  his 
contact  with  the  prophet.  Then  the  man  of  God  arose, 
and,  still  praying,  the  Scripture  says  tliat  he  walked 
through  the  iiouse  once,  walked  through  the  whole  house, 
went  into  every  room,  went  into  every  closet,  and  when  he 
had  walked  through  the  whole  house  and  had  seen  it  all 
he  came  back  again  to  the  chamber  where  the  boy  was 
lying  dead,  and  once  more  he  stretched  himself  out  upon 
the  child,  first  stretching  out  the  child's  hands,  and  so  he 
put  hand  upon  hand,  mouth  upon  mouth,  heart  upon 
heart,  and  when  he  had  thus  leaned  over  the  child  and 
stretched  out  upon  him  the  dead  boy  opened  his  eyes 
and  looked  ;  presently  he  opened  his  mouth  and  cried  out 
with  a  voice.  And  then  the  prophet  called  his  servant,  a 
man  named  Giezi,  and  he  said  to  him  :  "Go  call  the  Sun- 
amitess"  (this  was  the  mother)  "and  bid  her  to  take  her 
child."  And  she  came,  and  she  found  her  child  living, 
and  she  prostrated  herself  before  the  man  of  God,  and  she 
gave  thanks  for  the  gift  that  he  had  given  her. 

Now,  there  is  the  fact  to  which  again,  for  the  tliird 
time,  I  invite  your  attention.  I  ask  you  when  you  go 
home  to  open  your  Bible  at  the  fourth  chapter  of  the 
Fourth  Book  of  Kings,  and  you  will  find  recorded  word 
for  wo  id  the  fact  as  I  have  stated  it  to  you.  Now,  dearly 
beloved,  you  are  come  this  evening  into  a  temple  and  into 
the  presence  of  an  altar  where  on  every  other  occasion  of 
the  year  you  see  some  sign  of  worship  and  of  joy — some 
sign  of  life,  the  lamp  burning  before  the  Blessed  Sacra- 


446  The  PASSioy  of  Our  Lord. 

ment,  the  fatness  of  the  olive  exhausting  itself  in  a  tribute 
of  light  unto  its  God  ;  some  sign  of  joy,  the  caudles  lit 
upon  the  altar,  and  the  fresh  fair  flowers  among  the  sculp- 
tured saints  and  angels  that  stand  around  watching  the 
sanctuary  and  the  tabernacle.  But  to-night  no  sign  of  life, 
no  sign  of  worship  or  of  joy  is  there ;  the  lamp  is  extin- 
guished before  the  Blessed  Sacrament  and  yields  no  light ; 
the  doors  of  the  tabernacle  are  thrown  open  to  show  you 
the  empty  place  where  He  who  usually  dwells,  dwells  no 
more,  but  seems  to  have  fled  from  His  dwelling  place,  No 
flowers  adorn  the  altar,  no  lights  brighten  it ;  all  seems  as 
if  the  God  of  the  temple  were  gone  and  as  if  the  abomi- 
nation of  desolation  has  fallen  upon  His  very  holiest  places ; 
and  so  it  is.  It  is  Good  Friday  night.  Three  o'clock  on 
Good  Friday  heard  the  last  cry  of  the  dying  Man  upon  the 
cross.  The  next  moment  beheld  Him  dead.  In  an  hour 
or  two  He  was  taken  down  from  the  cross  and  buried  in 
the  tomb,  Mary  went  down  from  the  Hill  of  Calvary,  lean- 
ing upon  her  newly- found  son,  John  the  Evang(4ist,  with 
a  hand  thrown  carelessly  round  the  neck  of  the  loving 
Magdalene,  who  still  supported  her.  She  goes  home  to  a 
desolate  house,  a  widowed  and  a  childless  mother.  Jesus 
Christ  lies  in  the  sepulchre,  darkness  has  closed  upon  Ilim, 
death  has  asserted  its  dominion  over  Him  ;  hell  has  had  its 
victory  over  Him. 

Ah  !  but  let  us  consider  the  victory,  let  us  consider  the 
combat  and  the  triumph  which  seems  to  be  of  hell,  and  we 
Bhall  see  liow  glorious  the  combat  fought  by  the  hand  of 
God,  and  how  magnificent  the  victory  was  of  that  God 
over  the  devil,  of  life  eternal  over  death,  and  of  all  that 
heaven  contained  over  the  powers  of  hell.  The  prophet 
came  into  the  Sunnmite's  house,  and  there  he  found  a  dead 
child.  The  child  was  once  living,  full  of  life,  full  of  all 
the  grace,  full  of  all  the  gi'owing  sweetness  of  his  child- 
hood, the  de'iight  of  his  father's  heart  and  the  light  of  his 
eyes  ;  but  now  he  lies  dead,  unable  to  see  with  those  young 
eyes  of  his,  unable  to  move  his  hands,  unable  to  return  the 
love  of  the  father,  who  comes  caressing  him  even  upon  his 


The  Passion  of  Our  Lord.  447 

deatli-bed.  But  Immanity,  dearly  beloved,  was  born  of 
God  ;  our  nature  was  the  creation  ol;  God  ;  whether  in  body 
or  ill  soul,  it  was  still  the  work  of  God's  hands,  and  what- 
ever comes  of  God  is  instinct  with  life,  instinct  with 
beauty,  and  has  the  perfections  that  belong  to  it,  simply 
because  it  is  God's  work.  And,  therefore,  when  man  was 
first  created  ho  was  created  in  the  integrity  of  a  perfect 
nature  ;  a  body  which,  thougli  formed  of  the  slime  of  the 
earth,  yet  stood  erect  among  all  the  other  creatures  of  God 
and  looked  to  heaven  as  to  its  last  and  eternal  home  ;  a 
soul  created  by  Almighty  God  for  that  body,  insph-ed  by 
the  very  breath  of  God,  the  very  image  of  God,  filled  with 
knowledge,  filled  with  love,  and  dowered  with  a  glorious 
freedom  to  serve  and  love  the  God  who  made  it  unto  His 
own  likeness.  And  tlius  our  first  father  came  from  the 
liimd  of  God,  worthy  of  that  God  tliat  made  him,  and  the 
very  imnge  of  the  Eternal  Life  winch  had  created  him. 
But  he  sinned,  and  "by  sin,"  says  St.  Paul,  "came  death 
into  this  world,"  and  death  reigned  supreme.  Adam 
sinned,  and  in  his  sin  he  died.  He  died — his  eyes  closed 
to  the  vision  of  the  eternal  life  and  beauty  of  God  ;  his 
hands  w^ere  no  longer  lifted  in  grateful  sacrifice  of  prayer; 
he  sank  lifeless  to  the  ground,  his  feet  no  longer  bore  liim 
along  as  during  those  mysterious  walks  in  whicli  he  com- 
municated familiarly  with  God  in  the  sliades  of  Paradise 
before  his  fall ;  his  tcmguo  no  longer  spoke  words  of  praise  ; 
he  wa3  dead,  and  in  his  death  we  jdl  died.  The  child  of 
God  ij  dead — the  son  of  the  Sunamite  has  ceased  to  live. 
How  t;hall  he  ever  be  revived  again  ?  How  shall  he  ever 
open  his  eyc^s  to  behold  the  same  God  again  who  is  now 
shut  out  from  him  by  the  cloud  and  tlie  darkness  of  sin  ? 
How  shall  his  hands  ever  be  raised  again  by  his  own  action 
in  sacrifice  and  in  prayer  ?  How  shall  his  heart  beat  again 
for  God  ?  How  shall  his  lips  move  ever  again  in  words 
that  will  pimotrate  the  skies  and  fall  like  music  upon  the 
listening  ear  of  the  Most  High  ?  Who  is  to  give  him  life  % 
Ah  !  dearly  beloved,  the  life  eternal,  the  life  essential,  the 
life  which  is  the  very  essence  and  quintessence  of  life,  the 


448  The  Passion  of  Our  Lord, 

eternal  Word  of  God  ;  in  Him  was  life,  necessary  and  eter- 
nal, and  from  Him  in  the  act  of  creation  went  forth  life 
unto  all  tilings  that  live.  "For  by  Him  all  things  were 
made,"  says  St.  John,  "and  without  Him  was  made 
nothing  that  was  made."  Tliis  Life  Eternal  came  down 
fj'om  heaven  and  caiue  upon  this  earth  ;  He  looked  with 
pitying  eyes  upon  the  face  of  tlie  dead,  and,  not  content 
with  that  looking  upon  our  dead  humanity,  but,  like  the 
prophet  in  my  text  from  the  Fourth  Book  of  Kings,  He 
stretched  Himself  out  over  tlie  dead  and  put  His  hands 
upon  our  hands,  His  eyes  upon  our  eyes.  His  mouth  upon 
our  moutli.  His  heart  upon  our  heart,  and  he  warmed  the 
dead  child,  not  yet  vivifying,  nor  yet  recalling  to  life,  but 
He  warmed  the  dead  flesh.  And  this  He  did  in  His  first 
stretching  out  over  us  in  the  Incarnation — in  the  Incarna- 
tion in  which  the  Eternal  God  made  Himself  like  to  man. 
"/ti  similitudlnem  liominis  f  actus  et  Jiahitu  inventus  vi 
homo^''''  says  the  apostle — lie  was  made  in  the  likeness  of 
man,  and  in  form  found  like  a  man.  Hands  like  ours,  eyes 
like  ours,  mouth  to  moutli  with  ours,  heart  to  heart  with 
ours,  for  His  were  human  hands  that  delighted  in  the  labor 
of  man,  His  were  human  eyes  that  looked  upon  an  earthly 
Mother  and  loved  her  with  a  true  filial  love.  His  "was  an 
earthly  mouth  that  moved  in  prayer  and  in  supplication, 
just  as  you  and  I  can  pray.  His  was  a  human  heart  beat- 
ing with  human  affection,  yielding  to  the  high  and  glorious 
impulse,  now  of  tenderness,  as  when  He  wept  with  Martha 
over  her  brother's  giuve,  now  with  a  no  less  noble  and 
grand  passion  of  Christian  indignation,  as  when  with  hasty 
hand  He  made  a  scourge  of  little  ropes,  and,  lifting  His 
hand,  scourged  tlie  buyers  and  sellers  out  of  the  Temple. 
True  man,  as  true  as  you  and  I,  like  to  us.  He  stretched 
Himself  out  in  all  His  divinity  over  our  hnmanity  in  the 
Incarnation.  And,  strange  to  say,  although  God  became 
man,  and  there  was  a  Man-God  upon  the  earth,  yet  our 
humanity  had  not  begun  to  live.  It  was  only  wamied  into 
a  pri^paration  for  life. 

The  flesh  of  the  dead  child  was  warmed  when  the  pro- 


Tee  Passion  of  Our  Lord.  449 

phet  first  stretched  his  living  body  over  it ;  the  flesh  of 
the  dead  child  was  warmed,  and  there  was  hope  of  life 
there,  and  any  one  corning  and  feeling  the  hands  or  the 
face  of  the  dead  would  say :  "Perhaps  he  may  return  to 
life,  for  the  warmth  of  liL'e  is  slowly  returning  into  him 
from  the  man  of  God."  And  so,  dearly  beloved,  in  the 
Incarnation  we  began  to  b(^  warmed  into  life,  not  yet  to 
live.  He  spoke  for  thirty-three  years  in  the  midst  of  us  ; 
the  sight  of  Him,  the  example  of  Him,  the  words  of 
knowledge  that  He  poured  out,  the  faith  that  those  words 
created  prepared  our  dead  humanity  to  be  resuscitated, 
but  it  had  not  yet  begun  to  live.  We  did  not  begin  to  live 
in  Bethlehem,  we  did  not  begin  to  live  in  Nazaretli ;  no, 
nor  in  Jerusalem,  even  though  he  taught  us  in  the  Temple. 
Our  life  must  be  postponed,  we  only  began  to  live  else- 
where, as  we  shall  see  presently,  but  we  were  prepared  to 
live  under  the  contact  with  Jesus  Christ.  Then  when  the 
prophet  had  stretched  himself  out  and  warmed  the  flesh 
of  the  dead  child  he  arose,  and,  says  the  Scripture,  "he 
walked  through  the  house  once."  So  our  Divine  Lord  and 
Saviour  stretched  Himself  out  upon  us,  and  laying  hold  of 
us,  hand  to  hand,  face  to  face,  heart  to  heart,  in  His  In- 
carnation, then  He  rose  up  and  went  through  the  house 
of  our  humanity.  Ah  !  for  thirty-three  years  He  went 
through  the  house.  He  beheld  us  in  all  the  phases  of  our 
being,  He  met  us  in  all  the  stages  of  our  infirmity — the 
blind,  the  lame,  the  paralyzed,  the  leprous,  the  sinners, 
the  woman  willing- to  return  who  came  to  His  feet  to  wash 
them  with  her  tears,  the  woman  unwilling  to  return  and 
brought  sullenly  before  Him  with  her  fair  arms  tied  v^dth 
rope,  for  she  was  caught  in  her  crime — every  form  of  hu- 
man need,  every  form  of  human,  physical,  mental,  spirit- 
ual misery,  was  brought  before  Jesus  Christ,  and  He  made 
Himself  familiar  with  all.  He  went  through  the  house. 
He  went  through  the  house.  He  left  no  part  of  the  hu- 
man henrt  unexamined,  no  corner  of  the  human  spirit  un- 
explored ;  He  saw  with  scientific  eye  every  turning  and 
twining  and  twisting  of  our  perverse  nature.    He  followed 


450  The  Passion  of  Our  Lord, 

the  Pharisee  in  his  cunning  jealousy,  He  followed  the  pub- 
lican in  all  the  windings  of  his  depraved  avarice  ;  but  not 
only  did  He  look  with  scientific  eye,  but  He  touched  with 
medicating  and  tender  and  scientific  hand  every  form  of 
our  nature  ;  and  so  He  went  through  the  house,  and  this 
career  took  Him  thirty-three  years.  And  now  He  has 
made  the  round,  the  searching,  penetrating  round  of  all 
the  house  of  His  world  and  of  our  humanity,  and  the 
prophet  returns  to-day,  to-day  the  man  of  God  returns  to 
stretch  Himself  out  once  more  upon  the  dead  child,  and 
this  time,  in  this  second  stretching,  to  raise  him  up,  to 
open  his  eyes,  to  open  his  mouth,  to  give  him  back  life, 
blood  to  his  heart,  pulsation  to  his  pulse,  voice  to  his  lips, 
sight  to  his  eyes,  hearing  to  his  ears,  and  joy  to  the  Suna- 
mitess,  his  mother.  How  did  Jesus  Christ  do  this  \  This 
second  outstretching  of  the  Son  of  God  is  the  mj'stery 
contemplated  on  this  evening.  My  brethren,  I  will  use 
bold,  adventurous,  but,  I  am  confident,  orthodox  lan- 
guage when  I  tell  you  that  as  the  prophet  went  through 
the  house  after  his  lying  down  on  the  dead  child  and 
warming  it,  and  then,  having  gone  through  the  house  and 
seen  it,  came  back  and  lay  upon  the  child  once  more  and 
vivified  it,  so  it  was  necessary  that  Christ  our  Lord  should 
go  through  the  house  of  our  humanit}^  should  examine 
us  in  every  detail  of  our  weakness  and  of  our  depravity 
before  He  came  to  stretch  Himself  out  a  second  time  upon 
us  and  give  us  life.  And  why  ?  For  the  simplest  of  all 
reasons. 

The  first  outstretching  of  the  Son  of  God  upon  our  hu- 
manity was  an  act  of  divine  love,  divine  condescension, 
divine  mercy  ;  but  it  was  not  a  mercy  fulfilling  in  itself 
alone  the  act  of  our  redemption.  For  remember  that  if  it 
pleased  our  Divine  Lord  on  the  very  Christmas  night  when 
Ho  was  born  at  Bethlehem,  if  it  pleased  Him  to  anticipate 
His  resurrection  and  His  ascension,  and,  rising  from  the 
manger  in  which  Mary  laid  Him,  to  take  her  with  Him,  and 
tlie  Mother  and  the  Child  to  ascend  into  heaven, God— the 
Son  of  God  made  man — could  have  done  it.     But  if  He 


The  Passion  of  Our  Lord.  451 

did  it,  we  should  remain  as  we  were  before  His  coming — 
unredeemed.  If  He  had  done  it  He  in  heaven  would  be 
glorilied  even  as  Man,  glorified  for  the  act  of  obedience, 
for  the  act  of  submission  to  His  Eternal  Father.  He 
would  be  glorified,  Mary  would  be  the  Mother  of  God,  two 
human  beings  would  be  in  heaven,  but  not  another  child 
of  Adam  could  ever  have  entered  there.  The  second  act  was 
necessary  ;  it  was  not  enough  that  He  outstretched  Him- 
self over  us  in  the  humiliation  of  the  Incarnation,  but  He 
must  do  it  in  the  still  greater  humility  and  pain  of  His 
sufferings,  of  His  passion.  He  must  come  to  us  not  only 
with  the  hands  of  an  infant,  outstretched  in  love,  but  with 
the  bleeding  hands  of  a  man  outstretched  in  expiation. 

He  must  bring  to  us,  and  place  heart  to  heart  on  our 
hearts,  not  merely  the  sweet,  loving  heart  of  the  innocent 
Babe  of  Bethlehem,  or  the  beautiful  heart  of  the  growing 
Child  of  Nazareth,  but  He  must  put  upon  our  heart  a  heart 
bleeding  and  broken  for  our  love.  He  went  through  the 
house  ;  He  made  himself  familiar  with  every  form  of  our 
human  depravity,  with  every  human  weakness,  in  order 
that  when  the  hour  came  for  the  second  outstretching  of 
himself  upon  our  humanity  He  might  be  able  to  offer  dis- 
tinct suffering  and  a  distinct  offering  to  God  for  every 
single  form  of  human  depravity.  IS'ow  the  hour  for  that 
second  contact  between  God  and  man  approaches.  Christ 
our  Lord  has  made  His  prayer  in  the  garden,  and  He  has 
gone  through  the  agony  of  His  voluntary  acceptance  of 
our  sins.  Christ  our  Lord  has  given  the  gift  of  gifts  in  the 
Last  Supper.  Now  He  rises  up  from  the  garden  after  His 
prayer,  and  He  delivers  Himself  into  the  hands  of  His  ene- 
mies. Ah !  He  is  embraced  by  Judas,  and  the  heart  of 
the  Son  of  God  feels  chilled,  like  the  heart  of  the  mariner 
who,  sailing  upon  the  northern  seas,  suddenly  finds  his 
ship  between  the  icebergs,  and  a  chill  of  northern  ice  goes 
over  him,  and  the  very  blood  in  his  heart  seems  to  freeze. 
So  froze  up  the  heart  of  Jesus  Christ  when  the  blood 
mantling  His  face,  the  blood  that  was  streaming  down  from 
that  divine  face,  came  in  contact  with  the  lips  of  Judas. 


452  The  Passion  of  Our  Lord, 

He  is  dragged  across  the  brook  of  Cedron,  brought  that  night 
before  Annas  and  Caiplias,  and  wlien  they  had  questioned 
Him  and  striiek  Him,  and  buffeted  Him  and  humiiiated  Him 
in  every  form,  He  is  then  handed  over  towards  njidnight 
to  a  company  of  Roman  soldiers,  pagans — they  were  called 
archers,  the  archers  of  Pilate' s  guard — and  they  took  Him. 
He  was  a  godsend  to  them,  a  prisoner  given  up  to  their 
hands.     They  took  Him,  and  from  midnight  to  the  early 
morning  He  sat  in  their  guard-room,  and  they  amused 
themselves  the  whole  night  long  by  voiding  their  obscenities 
and  their  wickedness  and  their  reproaclies  upon  the  per- 
son of  Jesus  Christ.     We  may  well  imagine  liow  the  night 
passed.     Tlie  brutal  jest  from  man  to  man,  the  horrible 
allusions  to  their  excesses  and  impurities  falling  upon  the 
ear  of  the  Virgin' s  Child.   Then,  by  way  of  diversion,  \\q  can 
imagine  one  of  those  archers  of  Pilate's  guard  untighten- 
ing  his  bow  and  removing  the  string,  and  then  for  mere 
pastime  striking  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  right   and   left 
across  the  face  with  the  bow  ;  making  bets  with  each  other 
who  would  offer  Him  the  grossest  insults  ;  spitting  upon 
Him,  striking  Him  upon  either  cheek,  blindfolding  Him, 
and  then  going  and  striking  Him  on  the  face  and  saj'ing  to 
Him:   "Oh  I  you  are  the  Jewish  prophet;  tell  us   the 
name  of  the  man  who  struck  Thee."     And  thus  He  passed 
the  night  until  the  early  morning.     Ah  I    think  of  that 
night.     Ah  !  you — ^let  me  speak  to   yow.  candidly — ah ! 
you  man,  if  there  be  one  among  you,  who  is  a  sinner,  and 
who  watches  until  the  shade  of  night  begins  to  fall  to  go 
out  and  seek   his  unlawful  pleasures,  his  lustful  enjoy- 
ments,  until  the  morning,   thmk  of   the  niglit  that  the 
Eternal  Son  of  God  spent  among  the  impious    Roman 
soldiers.     That  niglit  was  spent  in  penance  for  your  ex- 
cesses, and  to  make  some  atonement  to  God,  and  to  shield 
you  from  the  anger  of  an  awful  God,  before  whose  eyes  the 
midnight  is  as  the  noonday,  and  who  watches  you  in  all 
the  passages  of  your  iniquity,  and  takes  terrible  note  of 
your  sins. 

The   morning  came,  and  our  Bivine  Lord  is  brought 


TiiE  Passion  of  Our  Lord.  453 

forth  from  tlie  prison  in  wliicli  he  spent  the  night,  wearied 
from  want  of  sleep,  tired  and  bjiiised  from  a^  the  insults 
that  lie  lias  received,  horrified  from  the  obscenities  that  He 
has  heard,  heart-broken  for  the  dreary  day  and  the  awful 
work  that  is  before  Him,  abandoned  by  His  apostles  and  dis  - 
ciples.  He  is  led  forth  ;  He  is  carried  before  Pontius  Pilate. 
Now,  now.  He  lies  down  the  second  time  upon  onr  dead  hu- 
manity, hand  to  hand,  eye  to  eye,  iieart  to  heart.  But  it  is 
quite  different  from  His  first  contact  with  us  in  the  Incar- 
nation. Now  He  comes,  after  having  walked  through  the 
house,  examined  and  seen  our  infirmities,  touched  our 
evils,  experienced  our  baseness  and  our  misery.  He  now 
comes  matured  scientifically,  by  his  outstretching  and  out- 
covering  of  us  to  bring  us  to  life.  And  in  the  walking 
through  the  house  He  found  that  the  great  sources  of  all 
human  evil  and  of  all  the  sins  of  man  were  the  concupi- 
scence of  the  eyes — that  is  to  say,  the  love  of  wealth,  the 
love  of  riches,  the  love  of  glory,  the  love  of  self — the  con- 
cupiscence of  the  flesh — that  is  to  say,  the  love  of  plea- 
sure, sensuality,  lust,  impurity — and  the  pride  of  life — the 
pride  of  will,  the  pride  which  a  man  takes  in  his  own  re- 
putation, in  his  own  glory,  the  ambition  for  distinction 
and  titles,  or  at  least  the  ambition  to  be  considered  a  man 
of  talent,  a  man  of  genius.  These  were  the  three  evils 
which  Christ  our  Lord  found  whilst  He  was  walking 
through  the  house. 

Now  He  comes  in  His  passion  to  lie  down  upon  us,  to 
stretch  Himself  out  over  the  dead  child,  and  by  contact 
with  Himself  to  heal  us  and  give  us  back  our  life.  And 
what  does  He  do,  dearly  beloved  ?  In  His  passion  He  first 
of  all  comes  in  contact  with  the  concupiscence  of  the  eyes, 
the  love  of  self,  and  He  meets  it  by  His  own  abject 
poverty.  He  comes  in  contact  with  the  concupiscence  of 
the  flesh,  and  He  meets  it  by  His  own  personal  sufferings 
and  mortification.  He  comes  in  contact  with  the  pride  of 
life,  and  lie  meets  it  with  His  own  humility  and  abnega- 
tion. I  ask  you  to  consider  these  three.  Hand  to  hand, 
eyes  to  eyes,   mouth  to  mouth,  He  came  upon  us.     He 


454  The  Passion  of  Our  Lord. 

came  and  found  the  hands  of  the  dead  stricken  by  the 
spirit  of  avarice  or  grasping  for  wealth.  He  came  and 
found  the  eyes  of  the  dead  blinded  by  pleasure,  longing 
fjDV  faifae,  glory,  independence,  and  pride.  He  came  and 
found  the  heart  of  the  dead  lifeless  and  motionless,  be- 
causo  Asmodeus,  the  demon  of  impurity,  had  touched  it 
with  an  impure  and  lustful  love,  and  every  higher  and 
holier  emotion  had  expired  within  us.  And,  therefore,  in 
His  passioa  He  came  by  His  poverty  to  atone  for  our 
avaiic  > — hand  to  hand;  by  His  humility  to  atone  for  our 
gazing  after  pride  and  honor — eye  to  eye ;  by  His  sufferings, 
bodily  mortification,  and  rending  of  the  flesh  He  atoned 
for  our  sensuality,  self-indulgence,  self -pampering,  and 
impurity — heart  to  heart.  He  had  not  much  to  lose, 
poverty  was  always  His  companion  in  life  ;  He  was  born 
in  a  stable,  He  lived  among  the  poor,  He  cast  His  lot  in 
with  them,  and  even  in  death  He  died  naked,  and  charity 
opened  another  man's  grave  for  Him.  All  that  He  had  in 
this  world  when  His  enemies  found  Him  was,  first,  the 
affection  of  His  friends  and  apostles,  who  up  to  that 
moment  were  saying  to  Him :  "  Master,  even  if  we  are 
to  die  for  Thee  we  will  never  abandon  Thee  or  deny 
Thee." 

Secondly,  He  had  the  love  of  His  Blessed  Mother,  Mary  ; 
thirdly.  He  had  the  few  garments  that  clothed  Him,  the 
seamless  robe  which  He  wore ;  and  fourthly,  and  above 
all,  He  had  the  love  of  His  Eternal  Father  in  heaven.  Now 
He  must  be  stripped  of  all  this.  HeJiad  nothing  else  to 
lose  ;  He  had  no  money  in  His  purse,  He  had  no  lands  or 
possessions  to  be  robbed  of ;  He  Avas  poor,  but  He  must  be 
stripped  even  of  the  little  He  had.  And,  therefore,  in  His 
passion  His  disciples  and  apostles  mive  Him  up  and  ran 
away  and  abandoned  Him.  He  stood  alone.  His  mother, 
whose  love  was  so  much  to  Him,  He  gave  up  by  His  own 
act,  saying  to  St.  John:  *'Take  this  woman,  take  her  for 
thy  mother  ;  behold  thy  mother ! "  And  to  the  woman  He 
said:  "Behold  thy  son!  Do  not  think  of  me  any  more, 
leave  me  here  alone."     The  few  garments  that  He  had,  the 


The  Passion  of  Our  Lord.  455 

seamless  robe,  and  tlie  few  other  articles  of  clotliing,  be- 
fore He  died  on  the  cross  He  saw  the  Roman  soldiers  cut- 
ting up  with  their  swords  and  dividing  them,  so  much  for 
the  one  and  so  much  for  the  other.  And  when  tliey  came 
to  the  seamless  robe  which  Mary's  hand  had  wrought  for 
Him,  they  said :  "  We  will  not  divide  this,  we  will  cast 
lots  for  it " ;  and  presently  He  heard  the  rattling  of  the  dice, 
and  one  man  won  it  and  took  it.  And  He  remained  naked. 
Nothing  remained  for  Him  on  earth  ;  oh !  but  the  riches  of 
heaven  were  His.  But  even  these  He  must  lose.  There- 
fore before  He  died  He  lifted  up  His  eyes,  heavy  with  the 
heaviness  of  death.  He  raised  by  a  great  effort  the  droop- 
ing head,  in  which  seventy-three  thorns  were  planted, 
each  one  sending  forth  its  stream  of  blood ;  He  raised  to 
heaven  that  divine  face,  now  pale  with  death.  His  lips  qui- 
vering in  His  agony,  and  faint  with  thirst,  and  He  cries 
out  to  His  Heavenly  Father:  "O  God!  why  hast  thou 
forsaken  me?"  The  Lord  Jesus  Christ!  His  Mother 
His  no  longer,  as  He  has  given  her  to  John  ;  His  few  gar- 
ments are  no  longer  His,  they  have  been  raffled,  they  are 
taken  away  ;  His  friends  are  no  longer  His,  they  are  gone 
from  him ;  His  God  in  heaven.  His  Eternal  Father,  seems 
to  have  forsaken  Him,  for  He  cries  out  with  faint  lips : 
"Why  has  thou  forsaken  me."  What  remains?  Behold 
Him  outstretched  over  our  humanity,  outstretched  hand 
to  hand  and  heart  to  heart  with  that  humanity  of  ours 
that  is  always  looking  for  friends,  and  for  good  clothing, 
and  for  love,  and  for  favor  both  from  Heaven  and  here. 
He  gives  them  all  up.  -.He  stretches  Himself  out,  eye  to  eye. 
It  is  not  enough  that  they  plunder,  it  is  not  enough  that 
He  is  forsaken  of  friends,  deprived  of  the  little  insignificant 
property  that  He  ^possessed,  deprived  of  all  consolation 
from  Heaven,  and  surrendering  Mary's  love  to  another 
upon  the  earth  ;  He  must  go  further  than  this.  There  are 
some  things  that  belong  to  Him,  and  it  seems  as  if  no  man 
could  take  from  Him,  and  they  are  that  which  seems  the 
interior  and  peculiar  inheritance  of  every  man — namely, 
His  reputation. 


456  The  Passiox  of  Our  Lord. 

Even  thongli  Mary  be  already  in  the  arms  of  her  second 
child,  even  though  Peter  and  the  rest  of  them  be  shivering 
with  fear  far  away  in  the  city  or  at  the  foot  of  the  mountain, 
even  though  the  soldiers  have  taken  the  few  robes  that  be- 
longed to  Him,  He  is  still  robed  in  the  crimson  mantle  of 
Els  own  sweet  blood,  and  He  may  still  fall  back  upon  that 
which  no  man  can  take  away  from  Him — namely.  His  mag- 
nificent character  for  sanctity,  for  wisdom,  and  for  power. 
He  had  a  great  reputation  for  sanctity.  When  the  blind 
man  whose  eyes  He  opened  was  brought  before  the  syna- 
gogue, and  they  said  to  him:  "Do  you  know  anything 
about  this  man  Avho  opened  your  eyes  ? "  "  No,"  said  he, 
"  I  know  nothing,  only  this :  I  know  that  I  was  born  blind, 
that  I  never  saw  one  ray  of  light  until  Jesus  of  Xazai-t-rh 
laid  His  hand  upon  me  and  gave  me  sight,  and  I  swear  to 
you  that  that  man  is  holy  who  has  done  this  for  me." 
And  all  the  people  acknowledged  His  holiness.  "Mas- 
ter," they  said  to  Him — we  know  the  very  Pharisees  said 
— "  Master,  we  know  that  Thou  teaches t  the  Avay  of  God 
-in  holiness  and  truth." 

Grand  as  was  His  character  for  sanctity.  His  character 
for  wisdom  was  equal.  When  He  was  only  twelve  years 
old  He  went  into  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem,  a  little  boy.  sat 
down  among  the  doctors,  and  not  a  man  of  them  A\as  able 
to  answer  His  questions,  and  they  were  struck  dunib  be- 
fore Him.  Nay,  more,  we  read  in  the  (J()s]»el  that  when 
they  brought  Him  the  coin  of  l!i<'  tribute  and  a^lxcd  Kim 
if  it  was  lawful  to  pay  taxes  to  (';e-ar  or  not.  lie  answered 
so  wisely  and  penetrated  so  keenly  into  their  inner  souls 
that  "from  that  day,"  says  the  Evanu-eli-i,  '-not  a  man 
was  able  to  ask  Him  a  question."'  Ih'  had  such  a  reputa- 
tion for  wisdom.  Finally  He  ojx-ned  the  eyi-s  of  the  1)lind 
and  bade  the  paralyzed  to  walk,  an<l  llie  ])fopl(^  all  said: 
"This  man  s])eaks  not  like  the  ]*haris«'c^.  not  like  onr 
priests  ;  this  man  si»eaks  lik(^.  one  vrho  lias  powci'.''  \  rry 
well,  now  at  least  li  ■  Irs  all  this.  No,  my  fi-iends,  r(>i)u- 
tati<m  for  wisdom,  repuiation  for  sanefity.  iv^mtation  for 
power,  all  these  belong  to  the  dear  aspirations  of  every 


The  Passion  of  Our  Lord.  457 

man  among  us,  and  Clirist  our  Lord  must  surrender  them, 
and  before  He  dies  upon  that  cross  He  must  be  stigmatized 
as  a  man  without  sanctity.  Tliey  brought  Him  to  Pontius 
Pilate,  and  when  Pilate  said  to  them  :  ''What  accusation 
do  you  bring  against  this  man  V  they  answered  him  :  "If 
He  was  not  a  malefactor  we  would  not  have  brought  Him 
to  you."  When  he  pushed  them  and  said :  "  But  tell  me 
what  He  Ifas  done,"  they  answered  :  "  He  is  a  blasphemer, 
and  according  to  our  law  He  must  be  put  to  death."  And 
actually  the  Son  of  God  so  lost  His  character  for  sanctity 
that  He  was  condemned  by  the  Jewish  Church,  and  His 
condemnation  was  ratified  by  the  Roman  governor,  as  a  blas- 
phemer, as  a  man  who  had  risen  in  rebellion  against  the 
Eternal  God,  as  a  man  who  was  unfit  to  pollute  the  air  He 
breathed  by  being  allowed  to  live  and  breathe  in  it.  And 
as  such  He  was  put  to  death.  You  know,  my  friends,  that 
there  are  certain  deaths  that  are  very  honorable.  When 
the  patriot,  the  man  of  immaculate  character,  the  man 
whose  virtues  are  upon  every  lip,  when  the  patriot,  ani- 
mated by  noble  thoughts  and  great  designs,  drawls  an  un- 
timely sword  and  strikes  an  imprudent  blow  and  fails,  he 
may  be  put  to  death,  but  his  memory  goes  down  in  honor, 
and  the  very  men  who  assist  in  his  execution  are  worship- 
ping tlie  glorious  character  of  him  who  is  taken  away. 
Not  so  with  Jesus  Christ.  N'ay,  the  mob  that  followed 
Him  to  Caiphas,  the  crowd  that  beheld  Him  when  He  was 
lifted  up  on  the  cross,  they  hissed  and  slunk  a!Vay  from 
Him ;  the  very  women  with  children  in  their  arms  looked 
upon  Him,  and  if  they  had  any  courage  at  all  it  was  only 
the  courage  to  advance  a  step  and  spit  on  Him  who  was 
crucified  ;  and  they  taught  their  children  to  look  upon  Him 
as  the  greatest  malefactor  that  was  ever  crucified  in  Israel. 
Jesus  Christ  our  Lord  had  still  His  character  for  wisdom 
— the  Pharisees  were  afraid  to  speak  to  Him,  He  was  so 
wise.  And  in  the  hour  of  His  passion  Pilate  sent  Him  to 
Herod,  and  when  He  came  to  the  court  of  Herod  what  did 
they  do  to  Him  ?  My  brethren,  they  put  a  white  garment 
upon  Him,  a  white  robe,  and  they  put  some  foolish  em- 


458  The  Passion  of  Our  Lord. 

blems  npon  His  head ;  they  brought  Him  in  among  the 
lords  and  ladies  of  the  dissolute  court  of  Herod  and  began 
to  play  with  Him  as  children  would  play  with  a  fool.  They 
asked  Him  to  w^ork  miracles.  "  Do  something,"  they  said, 
''for  us."  And  then  some  courtier,  in  all  the  bravery  of 
hi3  court  dress,  of  his  gold  and  fine  linen,  would  come  for- 
ward and  playfully  slap  our  Divine  Lord  in  the  face,  and 
there  was  a  great  laugh  among  the  lords  and  the  ladies. 

They  sent  Him  back  to  Pilate  through  the  streets  of 
Jerusalem,  dressed  as  a  fool  with  a  white  robe  and  the 
foolish  head-dress  upon  Him,  and  the  people  came  to  their 
doors  and  looked,  and  said  :  "Is  this  the  madman  ?  Oh ! 
the  poor  fellow.  And  so  they  are  going  to  crucify  Hira. 
Well,  perhaps  it  is  as  well ;  there  will  be  one  fool  the  less." 
And  the  little  boys  followed  Him  and  plucked  at  His 
garments,  and  some  stmck  Him  from  play  and  some  from 
malignity.  He  was  led  through  the  streets  as  a  fool,  and 
as  a  fool  He  was  brought  up  to  Calvary  and  crucified.  Not 
a  soul  remembered  that  tliis  was  the  man  whose  awful 
knowledge  confounded  and  silenced  their  Pharisees  and 
priests  ;  His  rejiutation  for  wisdom  was  gone.  Well,  they 
may  think  He  was  a  malefactor,  and  may  say  it  was  through 
Beelzebub,  the  prince  of  devils,  that  He  wrought  His  mira- 
cles. They  may  think  He  was  a  fool — it  was  not  the  first 
time  in  this  woiid  that  real  wisdom  was  mistaken  for  folly 
— but  at  least  there  was  one  thing  they  cannot  be  mistaken 
in  :  they  cannot  rob  Him  of  His  attribute  of  power.  His 
power  He  has  proved  by  so  many  miracles,  His  power  He 
has  put  before  them  in  so  many  and  such  astonishing 
ways,  that  surely  no  man  among  them  can  think,  whether 
He  be  man  or  devil,  whether  He  be  wise  or  mad,  no  man 
among  them  can  think  He  has  not  power.  They  saw  Him 
raising  the  dead  ;  they  saw  Him  commanding  the  blind  to 
see,  and  they  saw  ;  they  saw  Him  commanding  the  para- 
lyzed to  walk,  and  they  walked  ;  they  saw  Him  cure  the 
demoniacs  raging  with  fury  ;  the  moment  He  stretched 
out  His  hands  and  said  :  "Be  still,"  the  devil  was  humble 
and  meek  before  the  face  cT  his  God  ;  nay,  more,  they  saw 


The  Passion  of  Otjr  Lord.  459 

Him  upon  the  bosom  of  Genesaretli's  lake,  when  the 
stormy  winds  tossed  it  into  fuiy  ;  they  heard  the  cry  from 
the  ajjosties :  "O  Lord!  save  us  or  we  i)erish  ;  our  little 
barque  will  sink  beneath  us,"  and  they  saw  the  strange, 
mysterious  figure  of  a  man  standing  in  the  jDrow  of  the 
boat  and  saying  to  the  angry  winds  :  "Be  still,"  and  to 
the  threatening  clouds  :  "Depart,"  and  at  His  command 
the  tempest  died  into  a  calm  like  the  peace  of  God,  and 
the  clouds,  as  if  they  were  ashamed  to  have  thundered 
over  the  head  of  their  Lord,  suddenly  disappeared,  and  the 
blue  vault  of  heaven  appeared  above.  And  yet  He  is  now 
lifted  up  upon  a  cross,  nailed  with  four  nails,  bleeding  and 
fainting,  and  from  time  to  time  during  the  three  hours  letting 
fall  some  little  faint  word  of  love,  of  recommendation,  or 
of  wailing  ;  and — would  you  believe  it  ? — the  Pharisees  and 
the  priests  of  the  people  they  actually  came  to  the  foot  of 
the  cross,  and  they  looked  up  in  the  face  of  the  dying  Man 
and  they  said  to  Him:  "We  know  that  You  called  the 
dead  to  life,  and  we  saw  them  rise  out  of  their  graves  ; 
now,  now.  Thou  malefactor,  and  Thou  fool,  save  Thyself 
if  Thou  canst ;  come  down  from  the  cross  if  Thou  canst, 
and  we  will  believe  in  Thee."  And  he  died  without  a 
shred  of  reputation  left  to  Him.  The  proud  Pharisee,  with 
his  sweeping  robe,  came  up,  the  priest  in  all  the  grandeur, 
in  all  the  abominable  assumption  and  pride  of  his  wicked 
soul,  defied  our  Lord — "Come  dov^Ti  if  Thou  canst,  come 
down  and  we  will  believe  in  You  " ;  and  when  he  got  no 
reply  from  the  Victim  he  turned  to  the  people  and  said  : 
"He  was  able  to  save  others.  He  is  not  able  to  save  Him- 
self." Where  is  the  pride  of  life  now?  Do  jou,  men, 
who  are  so  anxious  to  shine  for  genius,  for  knov/ledge,  for 
wisdom,  for  power,  and  for  strength,  and,  perhaps,  I  will 
add,  for  sanctity  of  a  certain  kind,  look  on  the  face  of 
Jesus  Christ  dying  !  See  how  He  has  stretched  Himself  out 
upon  the  cross  on  our  j^ride,  on  our  vanity,  and  has  come 
eye  to  eye  with  us,  that,  though  His  eyes  closed  in  death, 
our  eyes,  like  those  of  the  child  under  the  prophet,  may 
open  to  the  life  eternal.      But  there  remained  the  third 


460  The  Passion  op  Our  Lord.  , 

evil  which  He  discovered,  and  which  He  saw  with  snch 
rude  evidence  brought  before  Him-^the  concupiscence  of 
the  flesh,  my  brothers.  All  holy  as  He  was,  the  Son  of 
God  did  not  only  come  in  contact  with  the  avaricious  and 
the  proud,  but  He  also  came  in  contact,  ay,  and  in  rude 
contact,  with  the  impure.  Can  anything  be  imagined 
more  beautiful  than  the  woman,  a  vile  sinner,  a  woman 
loaded  with  her  impurities,  reeking  with  her  sins,  who 
rushed  into  her  house  on  a  sudden  impulse ;  for  she  has  seen 
His  face  at  a  distance,  and  the  sight  of  it  has  awakened 
her  eyes  to  her  own  impurity  and  vUeness  ;  and  she  tears 
off  hastily  the  silks  and  satins,  tears  the  bracelets  off  her 
fair  and  beautiful  arms,  drags  the  coronet  off  her  head 
and  lets  loose  the  luxurious  hair,  snatches  up  a  box  of  oint- 
ment and  goes  into  the  street  to  find  Him.  Slie  is  told  He 
has  gone  into  a  certain  house  ;  she  goes  into  the  house  and 
steals  around  until  she  finds  Him,  takes  His  feet  in  her 
hands,  presses  the  feet  of  the  Son  of  God  to  her  lips  that 
only  yesterday  were  quivering  in  the  excess  of  her  impure 
love. 

Oh  !  how  rude  the  contact  between  all  that  is  highest  in 
heaven  and  all  that  is  most  loathsome  on  earth.  How  still 
more  so  was  the  contact  when  the  Pharisees,  hard  and 
senseless  men,  came  in  a  crowd  around  Him,  and  suddenly 
the  crowd  separated,  and  there,  standing  close  to  the  Son 
of  God,  so  close  that  her  very  breath  was  almost  felt  upon 
His  face,  a  woman  caught  in  her  iniquity,  a  woman  taken 
in  her  adultery,  a  woman  not  even  repentant — no  tear  in 
those  eyes  !  She  was  defiant ;  no  quivering  of  shame  upon 
those  lips,  no  remorseful  tears  in  those  eyes,  no  word  of 
expiation  from  her  mouth  ;  and  yet  He  allowed  Himself  to 
come  in  contact  with  all  this.  And  the  hour  comes  when 
He  is  to  outstretch  Himself  upon  this  last  and  most  teriible 
wound  of  our  dead  nature.  The  cliild  must  be  brought 
back  to  life,  the  child  must  be  brought  back  to  the  life  of 
purity  as  well  as  of  humility  and  faith,  and  the  only  way 
the  Son  of  God  can  do  this  is  to  rend^T  Himself  completely, 
and  surrender  Himself  into  the  hands  of  His  enemies — to 


The  Passion  of  Our  Lord.  461 

leave  Himself  altogether  at  their  mercy,  to  give  every  single 
member  of  His  body  to  them,  to  deny  them  nothing  that 
they  may  wish  to  do  with  Him  ;  and,  therefore,  to  cure  our 
sensuality  and  lieshliness,  our  self-indulgence,  our  lustf  ul- 
ness,  and  our  impurity,  the  Son  of  God  said  to  them; 
"  Behold  me  !  now  your  hour  is  come,  and  the  powers  of 
darkness  have  me  ;  do  with  me  what  you  will."  And  ac- 
cordingly iu  the  early  morning  of  Friday,  having  taken 
Him  before  Pilate,  he  receives  the  first  portion  of  His  sen- 
tence, and  Pilate  says  to  the  soldiers :  "Take  Ilim,  scourge 
Him."  To  the  people  he  said:  "Wait  a  while;  I  will 
bring  Him  back  and  you  shall  see  Him  again  ;  I  will  lay  my 
hand  upon  Him,  don't  be  afraid."  For  they  were  crying 
out  for  His  blood.  "His  blood  !  His  blood  !  "  the  mob  of 
Jerusalem  cried;  "Shed  His  blood,  we  want  His  blood." 
Pilate  said :  ' '  Wait ;  don' t  be  afraid,  I  will  shed  His  blood, 
emendatuTTh  dimittam.  I  swear  to  you  I  will  not  kill  Him, 
for  He  is  an  innocent  Man ;  but  before  I  dismiss  Him  I  will 
lay  my  hand  upon  Him;  wait."  The  soldiers  then  took 
our  Lord  and  brought  Him  out  into  a  square  court,  enclosed 
by  the  Prsetorium  and  the  palace  of  Pilate.  In  the  middle 
of  the  court  was  a  short  pillar,  and  to  it  was  attached  a 
chain.  They  brought  our  Divine  Lord  over  to  the  pillar. 
They  stripped  Him  naked  in  that  early  morning  in  March ; 
they  tied  His  arms  behind  His  back  to  the  pillar,  and  the 
company  of  Roman  archers  who  had  spent  the  night  tor- 
menting Him  girded  themselves  up  to  their  new  work,  to 
scourge  Him.  They  had  scourges,  according  to  the  East- 
ern tradition,  scourges  of  new  cord,  scourges  of  iron,  and 
scourges  of  green  branches  of  a  thorny  tree,  and  each  man 
armed  with  his  scourge  began  to  work  upon  the  body  of 
the  Saviour.  They  tore  Him  from  head  to  foot ;  they  first 
blackened  His  flesh,  raised  livid  welts  all  over  Him  ;  pre- 
sently the  skin  is  broken,  the  flesh  is  broken,  the  blood  be- 
gins to  flow ;  one  strikes  Him  across  the  face,  another 
strikes  Him  full  upon  the  head,  until  He  begins  to  stream 
forth  blood  from  every  member  of  His  sacred  body.  The 
blood  flows  down  around  Him,  no  part  of  Him  is  spared ; 


462  The  Pass/on  of  Our  Lord. 

wlien  the  scourges  are  sodden  witli  blood  they  are  flung 
aside,  and  fresh  arms  of  those  stalwart  soldiers  come  with 
fresh  scourges  to  begin  the  flagellation  again.  When  the 
branches  of  the  thorny  tree  are  worn  out  and  have  lost 
their  bitterness  fresh  branches  are  brought.  From  head 
to  foot,  standing  deep  in  His  own  blood,  they  scourge  Him 
until  they  think  He  is  dead,  and  when  they  cut  the  cords 
that  bound  Him  to  the  pillar  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  falls 
lifeless  in  the  midst  of  them,  and  He  is  I'aised  up,  and  they 
have  to  wait  a  while  until  some  signs  of  life  return  to  Him. 
His  garments  are  thrown  hastily  upon  Him,  and  He  is 
brought  back  to  Pilate.  But  before  they  bring  Him  back 
one  of  the  soldiers,  i)erhaps  out  of  the  very  fresh  branches 
they  had  brought  to  continue  the  flagellation,  plaited  a 
crown  of  the  thorns  and  forced  it  upon  His  head  and 
opened  seventy-three  fresh  wounds.  And  thus  bleeding 
a  ad  dying  He  is  brought  to  Pilate.  Pilate  beholds  Him, 
and  is  horrified  to  see  how  completely,  how  awfully  his 
own  instructions  have  been  carried  out.  He  brings  Him  out 
upon  the  balcony  of  his  house,  and,  turning  to  tiu^  Jews, 
he  says  only  these  words :  "Behold  the  Man — behold  Him ! 
You  have  asked  for  His  blood  ;  go  into  the  court  of  my 
house  and  you  wiU  find  the  blood  upon  the  pavement. 
You  have  asked  for  His  blood ;  behold  !  it  is  flowing  from  a 
thousand  wounds."  But  the  answer  the  Jews  cave  was  : 
"  We  demand  more  than  His  blood,  we  demand  llis  life"  ; 
and  so  Pilate  gave  Him  up  to  them.  He  gave  Ilira  "into 
their  hands,"  says  the  Evangelist,  "  to  work  their  way 
upon  Him."  And  in  a  few  minutes  the  bleeding,  fainting 
figure  of  our  Lord  is  seen  emerging  through  the  crowd  at 
Pilate's  house,  with  a  cross  upon  His  shoulders,  the  other 
end  ti-aiiing  upon  the  ground,  and  heavy  enough  to  bear 
on  its  upliftc  ■ !  i  he  weight  of  a  strong  man. 

With  that  ( iw»  on  His  shoulders  He  climbs  the  flinty 
sides  of  Calvary,  falling  three  times  upon  that  sad  journey, 
and,  arriving  at  the  summit  of  the  hill,  He  is  stretched  on 
the  cross.  His  garments  are  taken  from  Him  rudely,  the 
cross  is  laid  on  the  ground,  and  the  prophet  of  God,  the 


The  Passion  of  Our  Lord.  463 

man  of  God  goes  a  second  time  to  the  Sunamitess''  son  and 
stretches  Himself  out  over  the  dead.  He  has  healed  the 
concupiscence  of  the  eyes  by  His  poverty  ;  He  has  healed 
the  pride  of  life  by  His  excessive  humiliation.  He  now 
heals  the  concupiscence  of  the  flesh,  for  He  lays  His  own 
flesh  under  their  arms.  The  nails  are  laid  upon  the  palms 
of  His  hands  and  upon  the  insteps  of  His  feet,  and  the 
hammer  comes  upon  them,  and  a  sound  is  heard  of  iron 
driving — flrsr  through  flesh,  rending  sinew,  nerve.  The 
hands,  the  Angers,  involuntarily  close  round  with  their 
excessive  agony.  The  nails  come  out  at  the  back  of  the 
hand  and  sole  of  the  foot,  and  strike  into  the  hard  wood, 
and  then,  with  louder  and  more  resonant  blows,  these  huge 
spikes  are  driven  in,  until  the  executioners  have  satisfied 
themselves  they  are  firm  enough.  And  now  the  cross  is 
slowly  raised  up  ;  there  are  ropes  upon  ih^  arms  of  it,  and 
there  are  strong  men  pulling  at  these  ;  and  there  are  some 
holding  the  foot  of  the  cross,  and  their  hands  are  red- 
dened from  the  blood  flowing  from  the  Man  that  is  hang- 
ing there,  and  His  blood  flows  upon  their  heads  •,  it  falls 
down  in  great  drops,  like  the  first  drops  of  the  summer's 
rain.  And  the  cross  sways  in  the  air,  and  the  people  near 
and  far  have  their  eyes  fixed  on  the  raised  figure,  and 
slowly  it  rises — slowly  it  rises  until  at  length  raised  to  a 
perfect  perpendicular.  The  body  sways  out,  held  on  by 
the  nails  that  keep  His  hands  and  feet.  The  awful  head, 
crowned  with  thorns,  the  whole  body,  lacerated  and  bleed- 
ing, hangs  out  there,  and  the  Man  is  still  alive,  and  all  the 
people  behold  Him.  And  for  three  long  hours,  hour  after 
hour,  from  twelve  o'clock  in  the  day,  when  the  cross  was 
lifted  up,  until  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  three  long 
and  terrible  hours.  He  hangs ;  His  heart  is  breaking,  the 
tension  of  the  nerves,  the  strain  on  the  muscles,  the  loss 
of  blood,  the  awful  agony  of  every  limb  is  breaking  His 
heart  slowly.  There  He  is  outstretched — stretched  out 
upon  us  for  the  last  time — and  now  the  dead  child  that 
was  only  warmed  in  Bethlehem  at  the  Incarnation  must 
prepare  to  be  quickened  into  life  at  the  crucifixion.    Seven 


464  The  Passion  of  Our  Lord, 

times  He  spoke  during  these  tliree  hours — seven  times  He 
spoke,  sometimes  to  God  His  Father,  as  when  He  said: 
"O  Father!  into  Thy  liands  I  commend  my  spirit"; 
sometimes  to  man  upon  the  earth,  as  when  He  said  to 
St.  Jolm:  "Take  my  mother  for  thy  mother,"  and  to  His 
mother:  "Behold  thy  son";  sometimes  to  Himself,  as 
when,  as  if  communing  witli  Himself,  He  said :  "  Consum- 
Qnaiiim  esV — "All  things  are  now  accomplished,  I  have 
done."  At  the  end  of  the  third  hour  there  was  a  sudden 
silence  among  the  crowd  ;  even  those  who  were  loudest  in 
their  hissings,  even  those  who  were  most  outrageous  in 
their  insults  felt  a  strange  feeling  of  fear  come  over  them, 
and  they  held  their  peace.  The  Magdalene,  who  was  weep- 
ing freely,  ceased  her  weeping,  and  something  more  awful 
than  the  expression  of  sorrow  came  over  her ;  the  Mother 
of  God  stood  silent  at  the  foot  of  the  cross ;  the  Roman 
soldiers  ceased  their  babble  and  their  conversation  ;  their 
centurion  or  oflBcer  rose  up,  and  with  an  impulse  that  he 
could  not  account  for  commanded  silence,  and  theie  was 
dead  silence.  And  then,  dearly  beloved,  the  clouds  came 
over  the  face  of  heaven  until  no  ray  of  sunshine  was  sf^on, 
but  a  blackness  like  night  came  on.  The  third  hour  was 
api^roaching,  it  was  close ;  the  Man  upon  the  cross  seems  so 
far  dead  and  exhausted  as  to  lio  unable  to  say  ani^ther 
word.  And  suddenly  the  dying  and  drooping  liead  was 
raised,  the  loving  heart  dilates  and  expands  ;  the  lips, 
quivering  in  the  agony  of  death,  are  cleared  for  an  instant ; 
the  eye,  over  which  the  film  of  death  has  come,  becomes 
clear  and  bright  as  ray  of  noonday  sunshine  ;  a  glory  as  of 
life  eternal  is  upon  the  face  of  th*^  dying,  and  a  voice  is 
heard  ringing  out  from  the  heart  and  fio]ii  the  li])s  of  the 
dying  .f''-Hs  :  '•  Father!  l-'ather!  abandon  nu^  not.  Into 
Thy  hands  I  commend  my  spirit."  The  hend  f.ll  upon 
His  bosom  and  the  spirit  was  gone;  but  the  voi'-c,  the 
voice  went  out  and  swept  round  the  slopes  of  Calvary  and 
startled  the  dead  in  their  graves — the  voice  went  out  and 
swept  throuirh  the  streets  of  Jerusalem  and  filled  every 
house  w  ith  terror,  as  when  the  Angel  of  Death  went  through 


The  Passio.v  of  Our  Lord.  465 

the  Assyrian  camp  of  old — tlie  voice  went  througli  the 
garden  of  Gethsemani,  and  the  lofty  trees  shivered  as  in 
the  throes  of  a  tempest  at  its  passing — the  voice  ascended 
the  mountain  of  Olivet,  and  the  great  crags  and  mountains 
rocked  on  their  bases,  and  the  graves  gaped  open  and  the 
dead  came  forth,  and  strange  voices  were  heard  around. 
And  the  voice  has  stricken  terrof^  in  every  heart,  and  in 
the  sounding  of  the  word  and  the  g^ng  forth  of  the  spirit 
the  humanity  that  was  dead  for  fonr  thousand  years  sprang 
up,  like  the  Sunamitess'  son,  into  life,  under  the  deatli- 
groan  of  Jesus  Christ. 

Sj)rung  into  life  !  Behold  the  truth  :  the  centurion,  the 
Koman  soldier  that  commanded  the  soldiers,  tlie  officer  that 
was  in  command  over  them,  snatched  a  lance,  and  he  came 
and  said  :  "I  will  test  it ;  that  cry  could  not  be  the  cry  of 
a  mere  man  dying— that  cry  that  has  shaken  the  hills  and 
covered  the  earth  with  darkness,  and  waked  the  dead  out 
of  their  graves,  and  made  the  stones  gape  witli  fear.  I  will 
test  it."  He  set  his  lance  and  drove  it  right  through  the 
breast  of  Jesus  Christ ;  and,  drawing  back  that  lance,  to 
his  amazement,  from  the  dead  Man's  heart  came  a  stream 
of  water,  pure  and  limpid,  and  of  blood.  At  the  moment 
he  saw  that  miracle  he  cast  himself  uf)on  the  earth.  "  Sure- 
ly," he  said,  "Thou  art  the  Son  of  God."  And  the  Ro- 
man soldier  adored  his  dead  Lord.  Surely  the  Snnamitess' 
son  has  arisen,  the  dead  has  s|)oken,  the  eyes  that  weie 
darkened  for  ages  have  seen  the  light,  and  the  darkness 
that  reigned  universal  over  man  has  sjirung  up  into  a  glori- 
ous life  by  the  death-cry  of  Jesus  Christ.  Who  is  the 
Sunamitess?  When  the  prophet  had  raised  the  dead 
child  to  life  he  said  to  his  servant,  Giezi,  in  the  text  to 
which  I  invited  your  attention  :  "Go  to  the  Sunamitess, 
and  tell  her  to  take  her  child?"  Who  is  the  Sunamitess  ? 
Who  is  the  mother  to  take  her  child  vivified  by  the  death- 
cry  of  Jesus  Cln-ist."  Ah  !  dearly  beloved,  He  pointed  her 
out  to  us  Just  before  He  died.  He  told  us  her  name,  lier  sweet 
and  blessed  name,  with  His  dying  lips.  He  looked  upon 
her  with  His  dying  eyes,  and  He  said  to  John,  represent- 


466  The  Passion  of  Our  Lord. 

ing  all  Christian  men:  "Oson!  forget  the  mother  that 
bore  thee.  Eeliold  thy  Mother  is  here  in  Mary,  who  is  my 
Mother."  There  is  the  Sunamitess.  To  the  Siuiamitess 
He  said :  "Behold  thy  son."  The  prophet  said  to  his  ser- 
vant :  "Call  this  Sunamitess  and  tell  her  to  take  her  child 
who  is  brought  back  to  life."  And  Mary  o^Deued  her  arms, 
at  the  foot  of  the  cross,  and  our  humanity,  restored,  regene- 
rated, revivified,  fell  into  the  arms  of  Mary  as  the  revivified 
child  into  the  arms  of  his  Sunamitess  mother ;  and  this 
was  the  last  legacy  of  Jesus  Christ  to  us.  Dearly  beloved, 
one  word  and  I  have  done;  for,  in  truth,  the  subject  is  a 
great  one,  and  I  fear  that  I  have  already  trespassed  upon 
your  patience.  My  beloved,  behold  our  Lord  and  Saviour 
— behold  the  Man  of  men — the  true  Man  —the  true  Father 
and  Brother  of  men  !  See  how  He  has  conformed  to  us — 
conformed  to  our  misery,  to  our  weakness,  to  our  suffer- 
ings, to  our  death,  upon  the  cross  !  See  how  stretched  out 
those  glorious  arms  of  His  are  !  Oh  !  see  how  the  open 
heart  is  rent,  and  pouring  itself  out  for  you.  Come — come 
with  the  Roman  centurion — come  every  man  of  you,  before 
you  leave  this  church  to-night— witli  the  Roman  centiuion 
kneel  down  and  confess  Him  ;  say,  as  Longinus  said  :  "  Oh  ! 
Thou  art  surely  the  Son  of  God."  Open  your  arms — open 
yoiii-  lioarts,  that  you  maybe  confonupd  to  the  outstietched 
arms  and  the  open  and  rent  hrart  of  Jesus  ('lirist  :  ()])en 
your  lips  to  the  confession  of  faith  wiili  the  iidiiuni  soMier  ; 
open  your  hearts,  and  rend  them  to  sorrow  Un-  your 
sins  ;  open  your  hands,  and  may  the  Lord  of  iilorv.  who 
died  for  you,  be  impressed  iipnu  you  in  i-x^-vy  nciiou  of 
3''our  life;  and  so,  dearly  beloved, 'you  shall  I'i^^'  from 
death  unto  the  life  of  grace  before  the  dying  liguro  of  Jesus 
Christ,  your  Saviour. 


The  Cross  the  Sign  of  Salvation. 


Thebe  is  no  better  argument  on  the  (heme  here  treated  than  c:in  be  found 
in  this  discourse,  which  was  delivered  by  Father  Burke  iu  the  Cathedral 
at  Enniscorthy,  Ireland,  Suaday,  April  13,  1874. 

*^  At  that  time  :  When  it  was  late  that  same  da)',  being  the  first  day  of  the 
week,  and  the  doors  were  shut,  where  the  disciples  were  gathered  to- 
gether for  fear  of  the  Jews,  Jesus  came  and  stood  in  their  midst,  and 
said  to  them  :  Peace  be  to  you.  And  when  He  said  this  He  showed  them 
His  hands  and  His  side.  The  disciples  therefore  were  glad  when  they 
saw  the  Lord.  He  said  therefore  to  them  again  :  Peace  be  to  you.  As 
the  Father  hath  pent  me,  I  also  send  you.  When  he  said  thi«  he  breathed 
on  them  ;  and  said  to  them  :  Receive  ye  the  Holy  Ghost ;  whose  sins  ye 
shall  forgive,  they  are  forgiven  them  ;  and  whose  sins  ye  shall  retain, 
they  are  retainerl.  Now,  Thomas,  one  of  the  twelve,  who  is  called  Didy- 
mus,  was  not  with  them  when  Jesus  came.  The  other  disciples  there- 
fore said  to  him  :  We  have  seen  the  Lord.  But  he  said  lo  (hem  :  Except 
I  shall  see  in  his  hands  the  print  of  the  nails,  and  put  my  finger  in  the 
place  of  the  nails,  and  put  my  hand  in  his  side,  I  will  not  believe.  And 
after  ei  ht  days  again  his  disciples  were  within,  and  Thomas  with 
them.  Jesus  cometh,  the  doors  being  shut,  and  stood  in  the  midst,  and 
said  :  Peace  be  to  you.  Then  he  said  to  Thomas  :  Put  in  thy  finger 
hither,  and  see  my  hands,  and  bring  hither  thy  hand,  and  put  it  into 
my  side,  and  be  not  faithless,  but  believing.  Thomas  answered  and  said 
to  him  :  My  Lord  and  my  God  !  Jesus  said  to  him  :  Because  thou  hast 
seen  me.  Thomas,  thou  hast  believed ;  blessed  are  they  that  have  not 
seen,  and  have  believed." 

TT  has  been  well  said  that  we  owe  more  to  the  disbelief  of 
■*-  Thomas  than  to  the  faith  of  all  the  other  disciples,  be- 
cause Thomas  pnt  Christ  to  the  proof  of  the  truth  of  His 
resurrection  ;  and  Christ,  by  proving  it  to  Thomas,  proved 
it  to  all  the  future  generations  of  man.  Even  in  his  doubt 
there  was  a  certain  spirit  of  wisdom  in  Thomas  when  he 
made  his  appeal  to  the  truth  of  the  Divine  sacrifice  ;  for 

467 


4G8  The  Cnoss  the  Sign  of  Salvatiox.. 

sin  is  the  suffering  of  Jesus^  Clirist.     It  ^vas  Ghristiari  in-  • 
stincfe^liat  made  him  say  ;J*^Sh'o\r  me  tbjB  marks  on  His 
Jiands  and  sides,  and  I  willbelieve  in  Him/'     Oh  !  wond*^- 
'  fill  wisdom  9jBd^eicy*)f  Gpd,  who  even  .th^oiigh  the  in- 
fidelity of  Tliomas  has  given  us  proof  of  .^]fe  divine  ^^isdom. 
You  are  right,  0.,Thomas !    ^Yon  are  wi^gag  in  your  unbe- 
lief wrong  in  your  4onbts,>but  ^i^ght  wht£*ybu  ssCJfe  "  Let 
me  see  in  His  hands  the  mark  of  the  nails,  and  I  will  be- 
lieve m  Him."     Jesus  comesJpefore  them  eight  days  later 
in  that  upper  chamber,  the  doors  being  closed*  for  fear  of 
the  Jews,  and  He  says  to  Tliomas  :   "Come  here  ;  look  at 
these  hands  ;  are  they  not  pierced  with  the  nails  i   See  this 
bleeding  side  of  mine  ;  reach  hither  thy  hand  and  thrust 
ijit  inlb'yny  side;  and  be  not  incredulous,   but  believe." 
When  the  apostle  saw  the  terrible  reality — when  he  saw 
Calvary  and  the  grave  overcome,  and  Jesus  glorified — he 
knelt  down  and   cried  out :  "My  Lord  and  my  God!" 
What  did  it  mean  ?    It  meant  that  it  was  by  the  "  stigma- 
ta" of  Calvary  that   the  world  was  not  only  redeemed  but 
evangelized.     It  was  through  the  cross  of  Christ  that  the 
preaching  of  the  Gospel  began.    It  was  through  the  cross 
and  its  power  and  efficacy  that  the  Gospel  was  propagatfed  ; 
and  it  was  through  the  cross  that  all  men  must  be  saved. 
He  "preached  Christ  crucified,"  and  the  Word  of  Christ. 
The  Scripture  tells  us  that  "Faith  comes  by  hearing,  and 
hearing  by  the  Word  of  God  " ;  and  therefore  the  apostle 
calls  it  "  the  AYord  of  Faith  which  we  preach."     The  very 
sa^me  Word,  the  Word  of  Christ — to  those  who  are  ready 
to  perisli  in  their  own  wickedness  that  Word  is  folly  ;  but 
to  those  that  believe  it  is  "  the  power  of  God  and  the  wis- 
dom of   God."     It  is  well  they  should  reflect  on   these 
things.    His  spouse,  with  tears  in  her  eyes  and  the  songs  of 
lamentation  on  her  lips,  calling  on  us  to  kneel  down  and 
kiss  the  feet  of  the  image  of  Him  who  was  crucified  for 
us!    The  economy  and  the  wisdom  of  God  explained  it 
all;  therefore,  when  He  would  recall  Thomas  from  his  in- 
fidelity He  said:  "Behold  my  hands  and  my  feet ;  and  be 
not  incredulous,  but  believe."    To  this  day  the    faithful 


Tmjs  Cross^  the  Sign  of  Salvation.  469 

man  belie:\«jd  the  cross  vv^as  the  power  of  Grod  and  the  wis- 
dom of  Gad.  F^jom  generatiorf  to  generation  t^e  Chtirch 
haa-caneied  the  message  to  every  land  ;  and  the  burden  of 
her  message  "Wfas  the  cross  of  Jesus  Christy  ^JsUe  one  and. 
only  Hussion  for  which  the  Churgh  was  established  in  the 
world — the  one  and  only  reason  for  which  t\m  Almighty  Grod 
created  •ife'  and  put  His  l^ord  upon  4i<^  lips — was  thkt 
she  miglit  be  the  light  of  divine  truth  an|^  the  messenger 
of  divine  grace  ;  that  Christ  ^ight  be  known  to  the  minds 
of  all  men  by  divine  faith,  that  He  miglit  reign  in  the 
hearts  of  all  men  by  grace  and  divine  love.  Behold  the 
mission  of  the  Catholic  Church !  By  that  faith  and  grace 
the  souls  of  men  can  be  saved.  Without  that  divine 
grace  it  was  impossible  to  be  holy  and  to  be  save^.  '  He 
who  demands  more  than  faith  and  salvation  demands 
more  than  tlie  Church  has  a  right  to  promise  and  more 
than  she  has  a  right  to  administer.  Faith  and  grace  come 
through  Christ.  He  was  the  incarnation  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  who  was  eternal,  and  of  the  Virgin  Mary  He  was 
made  man. 

He  was  born  in  Bethlehem,  matured  to  manhood  in 
Jerusalem,  but  all  tended  to  the  cross.  It  was  for  the 
cross  that  He  was  born.  It  was  for  that  He  was  prepared 
in  the  all-holy  bosom  of  the  Virgin  Mary.  It  was  for  that 
cross  that  He  grew  apace  under  Mary's  hand.  It  was  to 
prepare  the  world  for  the  cross  that  He  preached  three 
years  in  the  towns  and  cities  of  Galilee  and  in  the  Temple 
of  Jerusalem.  It  was  on  the  cross  on  Calvary  that  the 
mission  of  the  great  Saviour  was  fulfilled  in  the  redemp- 
tion of  mankind.  It  was  there  that  was  wiped  away  the 
curse  of  universal  sin.  He  was  not  God  only,  not  man 
only,  but  God  and  man  united  in  Jesus  Christ.  He  was 
God  and  man  by  the  integrity  of  His  manhood  and  the 
fulness  of  His  divinity,  so  united  as  to  become  one  Divine 
Person,  never  to  be  separated.  The  humanity  of  Jesus 
Christ  is  as  much  an  object  of  our  faith  as  His  divinity. 
We  are  Christians  by  our  full  belief  in  Him  as  God  and 
man  united.    He  had  put  to  the  proof  the  reality  of  that 


470  The  Cross  the  Sign  of  SALVATiOflt. 

humanity.  We  read  of  oM  that  the  angels  of  God  took  to 
themselves  phantom  bodies,  tliat  they  might  present  them- 
selves to  man  and  thereby*! ullil  their  mission.  As,  for  ex- 
ample, tiie^angels  that  came  to  Abraham  in  his  tent  took 
to  themselves  phantom  bodies  that  they  might  appear  to 
the  ):)odiIy  eye.  ^  Gabriel  himself,  when  he  came  to  earfe, 
wiSs  obliged  to^ke  to  himseU  a  body  ;  but  it-^as  while 
bearing  the  message  from  God,  and  when  the  message  was 
once  delivered  the  body  disappeared  and  the  spirit  returned 
as  it  came.  But  when  the  Lord  God  can^  down  from 
heaven  it  was  not  a  mere  verbal  message  He  came  to  de- 
liver. It  was  not  a  mere  formal  or  phantom  body  He 
came  to  assume  for  the  time.  No  ;  He  came  to  do  labori- 
ous work — a  work  that  demanded  all  the  true  form  of  a 
true  man.  He  alone  of  all  the  heavenly  ones  proved  the 
reality  of  the  nature  that  He  took  upon  Him  by  shedding 
His  blood,  and  after  He  had  proved  the  terrible  reality  He 
burst  the  bonds  of  death.  Therefore  His  sacred  humanity 
was  a  great  object  of  our  faith — a  humanity  in  which  God 
Himself  was  present.  Its  reality  was  testified  by  the 
cross.  It  was  the  blood  of  the  Sacred  Heait  of  Jesus 
which  flowed  in  the  sevenfold  channels  of  the  sacraments  ; 
and  when  brought  in  contact  with  the  unregenerate  child 
of  Adam,  being  tinged  mystically  with  the  blood  of  Christ, 
the  child  of  nature  became  a  child  of  grace,  the  heir  of 
hell  became  a  child  of  God.  These  were  but  the  words  of 
man  falling  from  the  lips  of  man,  yet  they  were  but  the 
echo  of  words  that  fell  from  Jesus  Christ  in  heaven.  He 
said:  "Behold  my  hands  and  my  feet!  Behold  I  am 
real !  I  am  He  who  saved  you.  Receive  the  Holy  Ghost ; 
whosoever  sins  ye  forgive,  they  are  forgiven."  These 
were  the  words  of  God,  who  was  crucified,  spoken  in  His 
sacred  humanity.  And  to  the  eye  another  hand  was  visi- 
ble— the  hand  that  was  nailed  to  the  cross,  still  bearing 
the  stigmata  of  its  crucifixion.  If  the  Catholic  Church  is 
simply  and  solely  to  enlighten  the  world  by  that  faith  that 
came  from  the  cross,  it  follows  that  the  main  position  of 
the  Church  of  God  was  to  proclaim  the  cross  in  every  land. 


'^HE  Cross  the  Sig?t  of  Salvation.  471 

to  lift  it  up,  and  hold  it  in  honor  and  glory,  to  proclaim 
its  signiticance  and  power,  to  place  it  hither  and  thither 
over  the  earth,  to  let  it  go  before  the  face  of  the  Lord  ;  for 
He  said  :   "Ye  shall  behold  the  sign  of  the  Sob  of  Man  ui 

the  clouds  of  hejtven." 

't  ■  ■ 

''■'  This  was  what  the  Catholic  Church  has  ever  done,  ^o 
man  could  ever  accuse  her^j^f  being  ashamed  of  the  cross. 
"  God  forbid  that  I  should  glory,"  says  the  apostle,  "save 
in  the  cross  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ."  How  she  gloried  in 
it  when  Mury  Magdalene  would  not  be  torn  away  by  brutal 
hands  from  that  cross  on  which  our  Lord  was  dying  ! 
Christians  leant  their  heads  against  it  and  found  there  the 
consolation  and  comfort  which  upheld  them  in  their  sor- 
row. The  Catholic  Church  has  kept  it,  has  followed  it,  and 
bowed  down  before  it.  For  the  first  three  hundred  years 
of  the  Christian  era  the  cross  of  Christ  w^as  a  sign  by 
which  the  Cliristians  were  known.  The  moment  they  were 
seen  making  that  sign  they  were  known  as  Christians  ;  and 
when  they  were  sentenced  by  tyrants  to  cruel  tortures  and 
terrible  deaths,  when  they  opened  their  arms  to  receive 
their  death-wounds,  they  made  the  sign  of  the  cross — the 
cross  of  Jesus  Christ.  Those  who  denied  the  divinity 
of  Christ  said  to  those  who  upheld  the  cross:  "How 
could  this  cross  have  saved  the  world  ?  Many  a  man 
had  been  crucified  before  ;  how  could  such  good  come 
from  it  ?" 

Then  came  those  who  denied  the  humanity  of  our  Lord, 
and  they  said:  "  He  could  not  be  true  man,  or  we  know 
He  could  not  be  true  God."  To  them,  again,  the  Church 
upheld  the  cross,  and  said:  "Did  He  not  suffer  here? 
Was  He  not  suspended  on  this  cross  ?  Was  He  not  nailed 
hands  and  feet  to  it  ?  Could  that  have  happened  if  He  were 
not  true  man?"  Then  came  Nestorius  and  his  heretics, 
admitting  His  divinity  and  His  humanity,  but  denying  that 
Mary  wns  the  Mother  of  God.  Then,  again,  the  Church 
upheld  tlie  cross,  and  said  :  "  Were  not  the  merits  of  Him 
who  died  on  the  cross  sufficient  to  wipe  away  the  sins  of 
the  world?     Were  not  His  merits  infinite?      And  how 


47!8  TffE  Cross  the  Sign  of  Salvation, 

could  they  be  infinite  unless  the  person  who  suffered  was 
divine?" 

And  so  the  enemies  of  Christ  and  the  enemies  of  Mary 
■^ed  before  the  triumphant  cross  of  the  Son  of  God-  And 
60  throughout  the  world  every  heresy  has  found  in  the 
upraising  of  that  divine  cross  its  defeat.  The  banner  of 
the  cross  is  streaming  forth,  aad  many  a  hillside  is  spread 
out  under  its  rays.  A  short  time  ago  the  site  of  this 
•'  cathedral  was  a  chaos.     Look  at  its  spire  to-day  !     It 

spreads  its  shadow  over  the  fallow  ground,  over  the  broad 
and  faithful  field  and  meadow,  over  the  regions  around, 
that  where  it  falls  it  may  bring  the  benediction  of  Jesus 
Christ.  Yes  ;  the  Church  teaches  the  cross  of  Christ,  not 
only  by  the  lips  of  her  preachers  but  by  that  silent  and 
most  eldquent  of  all  speech  to  which  the  poet  refers  when 
he  says :  "  There  are  sermons  in  the  stones."  Why  does 
the  Catholic  Church  take  the  form  of  the  cross  ?  Because 
salvation  was  accomplished  on  the  Hill  of  Calvary.  Why 
is  the  cross  planted  on  that  beautiful  spire  ?  Not  merely 
because  it  is  a  thing  of  beauty  ;  not  because  it  is  an  object 
to  catch  the  eye ;  not  because  it  has  been  reared  up  strongly 
and  carefully  by  the  cunning  hand  of  the  artificer,  stone 
after  stone,  each  stone  fitted  into  the  other,  till  the  whole 
structure  rose  into  the  complete  realization  of  the  archi- 
tect's mind  and  the  mind  of  the  Church,  in  all  its  solem- 
nity and  grandeur  and  beauty,  fit  and  worthy  to  uphold 
the  symbol  of  the  cross  of  Jesus  Clirist. 

When  we  look  upon  the  cross  upon  that  magnificent 
spire  we  should  look  upon  it  with  instructed  eyes.  We 
should  be  able  to  interpret  what  the  spire  teaches.  And 
first  we  should  remember  that  when  the  Church  of  God 
was  established  on  the  earth  by  her  Divine  Founder  he 
planted  it  in  the  midst  of  the  world  which  was  already 
civilized.  When  the  Church  sprung  up  first  a  great  mes- 
senger had  gone  forth.  It  was  her  mission  to  purify  every 
art,  to  lift  up  every  science  of  every  form.  When  the 
Church  was  established  pagan  architecture  was  symbolical 
of  a  false  religion — spacious  colonnades,  large  courts,  and 


The  Cross  the  Sign  of  Salvation,  473 

great  buildings,  with  lines  running  level  with  the  earth, 
and  as  little  as  possible  raised  above  the  earth.  There  was 
nothing  in  them  looking  to  heaven — nothing  leading  the 
imagination  to  God.  But  when  society  improved,  then 
the  Church  of  God  rose  to  the  height  of  her  sacred  mis- 
sion— to  cultivate  the  arts,  to  create  the  sciences  once 
more,  and,  inspired  by  the  highest  Christian  ideas,  that 
which  before  was  but  a  beautiful  corpse  received  its  living 
spirit  from  the  inspiration  of  the  Church  of  God. 

Slowly  but  surely,  under  her  care,  came  forth  from  the 
Church — consecrated   by  her  monks,   stealing  back  into 
the  light — the  arts  which  barbaric  armies  had  spread  over 
and  destroyed.     Forth   came   Science  with  new  rays   of 
beauty  in  her  face  ;  and  from  her  mind  came  forth  the 
magnificent  institution  of  Gothic  architecture.     It  was  no 
level,  horizontal  line,  spreading  out  and  taking  in  large 
portions  of  soil ;  the  new  idea  was  to  take  in  so  much  of 
the  earth  only  as  was  necessary  to  raise  up  a  structure 
which  should  be  a  "  thing  of  beauty  and  a  joy  for  ever" — 
a  structure  sufficiently  broad  to  take  a  strong  hold  of  the 
earth,  and  gradually  narrowing  to  a  point,  as  if  it  were 
an  arrow  shot  from  the  Church  and  destined  to  meet  the 
skies.     It  must  rear  its  head  somewhat  more  gracefully  an<J 
more  tenderly  on  its  body,  but  sufficiently  strong  to  bear 
aloft  the  cross   of  Christ.      The  mind  and  spirit   which 
created  this  structure  were  entirely  Christian  and  Catholic, 
It  was  peculiarly  symbolical  of  the  Incarnation  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ.    It  represented  that  He  who  was  high- 
est in  heaven — the  eternal  God  who  dwells  in  light  inacces- 
sible,  true  God  of  true  God,  who  came  down  from  the 
highest  heaven — emptied  himself  of  all  His  greatness  for 
love  of  man  ;  that  He  came  to  earth  to  seek  and  save  that 
which  was  lost ;  that  He  took  ux)on  Him  the  fallen  and 
corrupted  nature  of  man. 

He  found  mankind  in  the  slough  of  four  thousand 
years  of  sin,  degraded  in  every  element  of  his  nature — in- 
tellectually degraded — with  hearts  debauched  and  depraved 
by  sin  ;    the   devil  rampant  and  triumphant  over  fallen 


474  The  Cross  the  Sign  of  Salvation.  * 

nature,  incapable  of  everything  great  in  thought,  word, 
or  action  ;  and  He,  the  incorruptibk^  God,  came  down  from 
heaven,  took  upon  Him  our  nature,  sanctified  it  by  His 
own  divinity,  prepared  it  till  it  became  fit  for  contact  with 
Gfod,  and  in  Himself  raised  that  which  was  highest  on 
earth  to  be  highest  in  heaven.  This  was  the  m\^stery  of 
the  Incarnation.  This  silent  preacher  lifts  its  head  to-day 
crowned  with  the  cross  that  proclaimed  that  Incarnation. 
It  was  the  sign  of  our  human  nature  exalted  in  Jesus 
Christ ;  and  when  we  look  upon  tliat  cross  crowning  that 
glorious  spire  we  should  think  of  the  humanity  of  Jesus. 

Again,  that  silent  preacher  will  proclaim  every  day, 
pointing  away  into  the  skies,  the  great  and  mighty  truth, 
that  as  a  man  aspires  to  heaven,  in  the  same  ])roportion  he 
must  recede  from  the  baseness  and  sinfulness  of  his  fallen 
nature.  We  see  what  a  hold  that  sjiire  has  taken  of  the 
earth,  going  down  to  the  rock  on  which  it  has  firmly  fixed 
itself,  raised  by  inches  into  solid  squares,  and  from  the 
tower  springing  an  edifice  which  tapers  gradually  to  a 
point,  as  it  proceeds  towards  Heaven,  rising  beautifully, 
diminishing  in  weight,  diminishing  in  thickness,  till  it 
reaches  the  point,  ai:d  th.-n,  and  only  then,  touching  and 
upholding  the  cross.  Thus  it  is  with  the  true  Christian, 
who  must  aspire  heavenward,  leaving  earth  and  its  cares 
and  sins  behind  him. 

Tlie  time  is  not  remote  when  a  battle  different  from 
that  which  the  Church  is  now  waging  was  decided  on  an 
adjoining  hill.  Then  the  day  was  dark  and  gloomy  ;  but 
the  morning  dawned  on  the  oj^jxisit^'  hill— the  hill  on 
which  we  are  now  assembled.  Tli"  cros^  ]i;is  bt  eii  ])  "anttd 
firmly  on  its  summit,  and  its  emlilem  lloats  tiiinni  hantly 
from  the  church  whicli  we  are  now  assembled  to  in- 
augurate. 


m 


The  Beauty  of  Divine  Worship. 


This  Rermon  was  preacted  by  Father  Burke  at  the  opening  of  the  Cathedral 
at  Ballina,  Ireland,  January  25,  1874.  He  has  here  pictured  in  all  its 
beauty  the  most  divine  of  all  the  enjoyments  and  duties  of  man. 

TN  the  name  of  the  Father,  and  of  the  Son,  and  of  the 
•*•  Holy  Ghost.     Amen. 

"  I  have  lov^ed,  O  Lord  f  the  beauty  of  Thy  house,  and 
the  place  where  Thy  glory  dwelleth." 

These  words,  dearly-beloved  brethren,  are  taken  from 
the  Book  of  Psalms,  and  if  we  ask  ourselves  what  is  the 
beauty  of  the  house  of  God,  whicli  the  Psalmist  declared 
that  he  loved,  I  answer  that  it  is  the  beauty  of  divine 
worship.  Dearly-beloved  brethren,  the  Almighty  God 
has  many  claims  upon  man — upon  our  gratitude  for  the 
benefits  we  have  received  from  Him,  upon  our  sorrow  for 
the  misfortune  of  having  offended  Him.  But  amongst  the 
many  claims  tliat  God  has  upon  us,  the  very  first  of  all  ia 
the  claim  of  adoration  or  worship.  He  is  our  God — our 
Creator.  He  is  infinite  in  perfection,  infinite  in  wisdom, 
infinite  in  power,  mercy,  and  love.  The  very  first  thing 
that  God  demands  of  man  is  that  we  should  admit  and  re- 
cognize these  attributes  of  God,  and,  recognizing  them, 
that  we  should  bow  down  and  adore  them.  Therefore, 
dearly -beloved  brethren,  the  Holy  Ghost  tells  us  in  Scrip- 
ture that  if  any  man  wish  to  approach  God  the  very  first 
thing  that  is  necessary  is  to  know  God  as  He  is.  This 
virtue  is  called  religion,  "by  which  we  recognize  God  in 
Himself,  in  His  attributes,  in  His  creatures  ;   and  the  first 

475 


476  The  Beauty  of  Divine  Woe  ship. 

act  of  religion  is  the  act  of  adoration  or  worship.  Now, 
the  Psalmist  who  uttered  these  words  had  not  yet  beheld 
the  glory  of  God,  the  Temple  of  Jerusalem.  Tiie  Temple 
was  not  yet  built,  but  was  to  be  the  work  of  his  son,  the 
great  and  wise  King  Solomon.  But  David  saw  it  not,  and 
yet  he  said:  "I  have. loved,  O  Lord!  the  beauty  of  Thy 
house."  He  beheld  it  in  the  vision  of  his  mind,  he  saw 
the  stateliness  of  its  grandeur,  the  majesty  of  its  propor- 
tions, the  richness  of  its  material.  He  saw  there  the  gold 
of  Ophir,  the  scarlet  twice  dyed  of  Tyre,  and  the  costly 
marbles  taken  out  of  the  hearts  of  the  hills,  and  he  re- 
joiced, because  all  this  was  fitting  for  the  house  in  which 
the  glory  of  the  Lord  God  was  to  dwell.  But  above  all 
things,  dearly  beloved,  he  beheld  in  the  vision  then  in 
his  mind  all  the  tribes  of  Israel  coming  to  Jerusalem  to 
worship  in  the  Temple  and  adore  their  God.  He  beheld 
the  beauty  of  adoration  surpassing  all  other  beauties  of 
the  house  of  God.  He  saw,  as  the  vision  extended  before 
his  prophetic  eyes,  the  successive  generations  of  true 
Israelites  worshipping  there,  and  he  rejoiced  ;  until  at 
length  he  beheld  the  Virgin  leading  in  that  Child  wlio  was 
God  into  His  own  house.  Tlien  it  was  that  in  tlie  fulness 
of  his  prophetic  heart  he  exclaimed :  "OLord!  I  have 
loved  the  beauty  of  Thy  house  and  the  place  where  Thy 
glory  dwelleth;  for  lo!  the  Lord  God  has  sent  down  His 
only  Son  into  His  own  mansion"  ;  and  then  the  vision  ex- 
tended until  the  prophet  saw  the  fading  glories  of  Jerusa- 
lem pass  away.  He  saw  the  veil  rent,  and  the  holiness 
depart  from  the  house  of  God,  until  the  abomination  of 
desolation  was  there.  He  saw  the  mercy-seat  empty,  but 
again  He  saw  rise  from  out  th-^  ruins  of  the  one  Temple  of 
Jerusalem  ten  thonsand  temples  sntp:issinc:  each  other  in 
beauty  and  loveliness.  He  saw  the  t^-n  tlidusand  temples 
of  the  living  God  spring  up  under  the  sky,  and  every- 
where the  altar  of  sanctificntion,  the  tabernacle  of  the 
Divine  Presence.  And  the  latter  glories  far  exceeded  even 
the  former,  and  then  it  was  that  he  again  exclaimed  :  "  I 
have  loved,  O  Lord !   the  beauty  of  Thy  house,  and  the 


,  The  Beauty  of  Divine  Worship.  477 

place  where  Thy  glory  dwelleth."  The  zeal  which  made 
him  rejoice  in  the  beauty  of  the  house  of  God  sprang  up 
again  in  another  and  a  greater  and  infinitely  holier  heart 
than  that  of  David — ^it  burned  in  the  heart  of  our  Lord 
and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  who  was  so  zealous  for  the 
honor  and  beauty  of  His  Father's  house  that  when  He 
came,  a  strong  man  in  the  fulness  and  in  the  maturity 
of  His  manhood,  into  that  Temple  of  Jerusalem,  expecting 
to  find  the  multitude  in  adoration— expecting  to  feast  His 
eyes  on  the  beauty  of  worship— and  He  only  found  the 
money-changers  sitting  at  their  tables,  the  merchants  dis- 
posing of  their  wares,  and  no  man  engaged  in  adoration  or 
prayer,  then,  at  this  sight,  the  fury  of  God  beamed  forth 
from  the  eyes  of  the  meek  and  humble  Jesus  ;  then,  with 
avenging  anger,  He  took  the  cords,  and,  plaiting  them  into 
a  scourge,  lifted  His  right  arm  and  whipped  them  out  of 
the  Temple,  saying:  "It  is  written,  My  house  shall  be  a 
house  of  prayer,  but  you  have  made  it  a  den  of  thieves." 
The  zeal  that  was  in  the  heart  of  the  royal  Prophet-King 
of  Israel — the  zeal  that  burned  in  the  heart  and  was 
manifested  in  the  action  of  the  Lord  God  mnde  man — that 
zeal  and  that  spirit  passed  on  into  the  Church  of  God  ;  for 
it  is  written  in  the  Scriptures :  "  Thus  saith  the  Lord,  My 
Spirit  shall  rest  upon  you,  and  I  shall  put  my  seal  upon 
you." 

Therefore,  from  the  very  first  days  of  Christianity  to 
this  liour,  and  as  it  shall  be  to  the  last  of  the  world's  ex- 
istence, the  first  thought  of  every  true-hearted,  right-living 
Christian  man  is  the  honor,  the  glory,  and  the  beauty  of 
the  house  of  God,  and  the  majesty  of  the  place  where  His 
glory  dwelletli.  For  this  God-like  and  Christian  purpose, 
and  animated,  dearly-beloved  brethren,  by  this  divine 
spirit,  are  you  assembled  here  to-day  around  the  bishop  and 
pastor  of  your  souls.  The  same  thought  occupies  your 
mind  that  occupies  his  ;  the  same  love  burns  in  your 
heart  as  in  his ;  the  same  spirit  animates  you  as  him— that 
is,  the  zeal  for  the  beauty,  the  honor,  the  majesty  of  the 
house  of  your  God.    You  are  assembled  to  offer  unto  God 


478  The  Beauty  of  Divine  Won  ship. 

the  instrument  that  shall  resound  for  ever  to  His  praise, 
and  in  His  name  alone  you  are  assembled  to  perform  this 
duty  and  pay  this  solemn  feature  of  reverence  to  the 
house  of  God,  to  make  it  vocal  with  the  voice  of  piaise ; 
and  this  is  but  one  of  a  series  of  efforts  which  you  are 
making  to  accomplish  the  beauty  of  the  house  of  God. 
Sacrifices  require  to  be  made,  and  you  are  not  afraid  to  in- 
cur them  in  so  high  and  holy  a  cause  as  the  beauty  of  the 
house  of  God. 

And  now  let  us  reflect  and  consider  in  a  more  especial 
manner  that  feature  of  beauty  which  your  zeal  and  your 
love  have  added  to  the  house  of  God.  '  I  said  that  worship 
was  the  highest  act  of  religion  and  the  first  duty  tliat  we 
owe  to  God.  Now  let  us  consider  in  what  this  worship 
consists.  It  consists  partly  in  work  of  the  mind,  partly  in 
adoration  of  the  heart,  partly  in  the  homage  and  adoration 
of  the  whole  man,  both  soul  and  body.  Worsliip  begins 
with  the  mind,  the  intelligence,  believing  and  bowing 
down  before  the  truth^of  divine  faith — of  a  faith  without 
which  it  is  impossible  to  recognize  the  Almighty  God,  or 
form  any  adequate  idea  of  His  self-existent  and  necessary 
being.  Secondly,  however,  the  feeling  must  pass  from  the 
mind  to  the  heart.  Faith  alone,  dearly  beloved,  will  never 
save  us  ;  be  not  deceived  !  The  Scripture  says  if  we  have 
faith  strong  enough  to  move  mountains,  and  we  have  not 
the  charity  of  God,  our  faith  avails  ns  nothing.  And  did 
not  our  Divine  Redeemer  tell  us  that  the  devils  also  have 
knowledge  and  believe.  The  devils  believe  and  tremble, 
but  they  have  no  love,  therefore  they  can  nev«'r  approach 
to  God.  Divine  charity,  loving,  purifying,  whilst  it  ab- 
sorbs the  heart  of  man,  is  a  pure  offspring  of  faith,  and 
this  also  belongs  to  divine  worship.  Besides  the  faith  of 
the  mind  and  the  love  of  the  heart,  the  Almighty  God  de- 
mands the  homage  of  the  exterior  man.  He  demands  from 
us  external  and  palpable  acts  of  worship,  such  as  that 
which  the  blind  man  paid  to  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  He 
opened  the  eyes  of  that  blind  man,  and,  having  opened  the 
eyes  of  his  body,  He  opened  the  eyes  of  his  soul,  saying  to 


The  Beauty  of  Divi]s;e  Worship.  479 

him :  "Dost  thou  believe  in  the  Son  of  God ? "  The  blind 
man  answered  :  "Lord,  where  is  He,  that  I  may  believe  in 
Him?"  Christ  ans^rered:  "I  am  He."  The  blind  #ian 
answered  and  said :  "  Lord,  I  believe."  And  naturally  and 
necessarily  the  external  act  followed  the  avowal  of  faith ; 
for,  says  tlie  Scripture,  "  falling  down,  he  adored  Him." 
It  came  naturally.  He  said  :  "Lord,  I  believe,"  and  in  the 
next  moment  he  was  down  on  his  knees  adoring  Him  with 
faith  and  believed.  And  I  ask  you  if  the  blind  man  re- 
fused to  kneel  down  and  adore,  how  could  we  say  that  he 
was  sincere  in  his  belief?  "Dost  thou  believe  in  the  Son 
of  God?"  said  oiir  Lord,  and  the  answer  was :  "Lord,  I 
believe."  K  you  believe  in  Him,  you  must  adore  and  wor- 
ship iiim.  The  worship  of  the  external  man — the  bowing 
down  of  the  head  and  the  bending  of  the  knee — is  the 
necessary  consequence  of  faith,  of  the  intelligence  and  love 
of  the  heart,  and  therefore  it  is  that  the  Scripture  tells  us 
expressly  by  the  mouth  of  the  apostles  that  at  the  sound 
of  the  name  of  Jesus,  wliich  is  above  all  names  the  name, 
the  only  one  given  to  man  whereby  he  may  be  saved — that 
at  the  sound  of  that  name  every  knee  shall  bend,  in  heaven, 
on  earth,  and  in  hell.  Worship,  therefore,  involves,  dearly 
beloved,  the  mind,  the  heart,  and  the  exterior  man. 

Now,  when  Jesus  Christ  instituted  the  Christian  re- 
ligion, and  when  He  formed  His  Church,  it  was  for  the 
express  purpose  of  perpetuating  for  ever  amongst  men  the 
knowledge  and  love  and  the  worship  of  the  Almighty  God. 
Tlierefore  the  Church  of  God  is  bound  to  appeal  to  the 
mind,  is  bound  to  appeal  to  the  heart,  is  bound  to  furnish 
with  solemn  liturgy  the  exterior  expression  of  her  worship. 
She  appeals  to  the  mind,  and  that  she  might  be  able  to 
make  that  ajjpeal  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  put  upon  her 
lips  the  word  of  truth  that  was  never  to  fail — the  word  of 
truth  that  was  the  created  faith  in  the  mind  and  intel- 
ligence of  men — the  word  of  truth  that  was  to  be  preached 
by  the  life  of  the  Church  to  the  end  of  time. 

Therefore  St.  James  tells  us  faith  comes  by  hearing — 
hearing  the  Word  of  God.    Therefore  Christ  our  Lord  said 


480  The  Beauty  of  Divine  Worship. 

to  His  Church,  Go  preach  the  Gospel  to  every  nation.  If 
the  Son  of  God,  dearly  beloved,  wished  or  intended  to 
creaite  only  intellectual  religion,  He  would  have  stopped 
here.  If  He  had  intended  to  appeal  only  to  the  mind  of 
man,  He  would  have  stopped  at  the  tradition  of  the  Word ; 
but  the  intention  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  founding 
the  Christian  religion  was  to  go  farther  and  deeper  than 
the  mere  intelligence.  It  was  to  strike  home  to  the  heart. 
It  was  to  penetrate  the  spirit  and  to  obtain  possession  of 
the  whole  man,  and  therefore  He  did  not  stop  at  the  mere 
granting  of  the  Word,  creating  light  and  faith,  but  He 
furnished  His  Church  with  every  means  by  which  she 
can  appeal  to  the  heart,  move  the  spirit,  bow  down  the 
head,  and  chasten  and  purify  the  body  as  well  as  the  soul 
of  man  ;  and  amongst  the  means  with  which  God  furnished 
His  Church  to  reach  the  heart  and  to  strike  the  spirit  of 
man  in  His  worship,  one  of  the  most  direct,  one  of  the 
most  powerful  is  the  appeal  which  is  made  by  the  music 
of  the  Church  to  the  ear,  and  through  the  hearing  to  the 
heart  of  man.  Church  music — the  voice  of  praise  lifted 
up  in  melodious  chords  ;  the  swell  and  the  pealing  of  the 
organ  b  "jniiiLC  aloft  the  loud  hosanna  of  adoration  to  God  ; 
the  soft,  low,  tender  notes  that  steal  tlirongh  the  senses 
into  the  lieart  of  man,  and  draw  us  away  from  ourselves 
until  we  are  altogether  before  God  ;  a  mild  strain  that  falls 
like  the  breathing  of  God's  angels  in  its  soothing  intiuence 
on  the  troubled  spirit,  until  we  are  truly  called,  lulled  into 
that  state  of  sacred  rest  that  is  necessary  in  order  to  hear 
the  voice  and  realize  the  presence  of  God  ;  the  storm-rush- 
ing notes  tliat  proclaim  in  voice  of  praise  some  strong 
emotion  of  ]oy^  some  delightful  surprise  of  revealed  truth, 
some  mighty  mystery  giving  us  triumph  over  the  enemies 
of  God — all  this  interpreted  by  the  Church's  music  forms 
one  of  the  most  powerful  ai)peals  which  slie  makes  in  her 
worship  to  man,  not  only  to  his  intelligence,  bnt  it  arouses 
the  lieart  of  man  to  the  voice  of  the  preacher,  ])ioclaiming 
revealed  truth  as  an  appeal  to  your  mind.  He  appeals  to 
you  with  his  proofs,  with  his  arguments,  with  his  denun- 


The  Beauty  of  Divine  Worship.  481 

ciations,  in  order  to  create  in  your  souls  tfeat  amount  of 
knowledge  without  which  it  is  impossible  to  please  God  ;  but 
the  voice  of  the  organ  appeals  rather  to  your  heart.  Deep 
in  nature,  deep  in  the  nature  of  man,  is  the  appeal.  Per- 
fect is  the  wisdom  which  the  Church  of  God  manifests, 
and  deep  het  knowledge  of  human  nature,  when  she  brings 
to  her  aid  through  the  ear  an  appeal  to  (he  heart  of  man 
by  the  powerful  help  of  her  ecclesiastical  music ;  for, 
dearly  beloved,  there  is,  perhaps,  no  feature  in  our  nature 
more  interesting  to  the  philosophical  student  than  the 
strange  mystery  of  the  harmony  of  man's  soul  with  song. 
Every  emotion  of  the  heart  naturally  finds  its  veut  in  some 
musical  note.  Thus,  when  the  Almighty  God  created  in 
the  beginning,  the  spheres  moved  in  harmony  under  His 
commanding  voice.  All  nature  took  up  its  song,  its  melody 
of  obedient  praise  and  glorious  thanksgiving  to  Almighty 
God.  We  have  the  authority  of  the  Scripture  for  this : 
"The  heavens  tell  the  glory  of  God,  and  the  firmament 
proclaims  the  work  of  His  hands  "  ;  and  in  the  Book  of  Job 
we  find  these  beautiful  words  :  "Where  wert  thou,  O  man ! 
in  the  beginning  when  the  Lord  created  the  heavens  and 
the  earth,  when  the  morning  stars  praised  the  Lord  to- 
gether, and  all  the  sons  of  God  made  a  joyful  melody  ?" 

All  nature  is  epitomized  in  man,  and  the  harmony  that 
pervades  the  whole  creation  of  God  is  re-echoed  in  the 
inner  soul  of  man.  The  little  infant,  acting  only  according 
to  the  instinct  of  nature,  announces  a  gleam  of  pleasure 
passing  over  its  innocent  spirit  or  the  fleeting  cloud  of  in- 
fant sorrow  by  a  wail,  which  denotes  the  one,  or  the  musi- 
cal high  note,  which  proclaims  the  other.  And  as  the  man 
grows  into  his  manhood,  the  natural  expressive  note  of 
music  comes  to  hira ;  it  needs  not  the  instruction  of  a 
master,  it  is  there  implanted  by  nature  herself  in  his  soul, 
that  he  should  express  joy  or  sorrow  in  a  musical  note. 
And  so  in  like  manner,  when  we  come  to  consider  God's 
dealings  with  man,  as  revealed  to  us,  do  we  not  find  both 
in  heaven  and  on  earth  that  music  is  the  language  of  sor- 
row or  of  joy  ?    Thus,  when  the  angels  of  God  were  created, 


482  The  Bea  utt  of  Divine  Worship. 

it  was  to  notes  of  angelic  music  they  attuned  their  celes- 
tial voices,  as  we  are  told  by  the  inspired  one  of  Patmos, 
who  had  beheld  the  joyful  scenes  that  took  place  before 
the  throne  of  God:  "And  the  voice  I  heard  was  as  the 
voice  of  harpers,  harping  on  their  harps."  The  voice  of 
praise  in  heaven,  the  angelic  voice,  has  resounded  on  earth 
over  and  over  again.  The  shepherds  were  keeping  watch 
on  that  winter  night  in  the  midst  of  flocks,  when  suddenly 
in  the  darkness  of  the  night  they  beheld  strange  forms  of 
beauty,  flashing  like  beams  of  light.  It  was  the  angels 
flitting  hither  and  thither  in  their  joy. 

Then  were  heard  many  angels  filling  the  midnight  air 
with  melody,  until  it  trembled  with  their  music,  saying : 
*' Glory  be  to  God  in  the  highest ;  peace  on  earth  to  men 
of  good  will."  Christ  died,  and  in  two  days  after,  when 
the  sun  of  Easter  arose,  its  beams  were  cast  on  an  empty 
grave  where  the  night  before  a  dead  man  was  lying  ;  but 
when  the  women  came  in  early  morning  they  heard  the 
angel's  voice,  and  saw  the  angel  clothed  in  white,  who  said : 
"  Why  seek  you  the  living  amongst  the  dead?  Clirist  is 
risen.  He  is  not  here."  Forty  days  after  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  was  seen  on  the  summit  of  Mount  Olivet  amongst 
the  olive  groves ;  and  the  apostles  beheld  Him  as  he  rose 
up  into  the  air,  rising  higher  and  higher,  until  they  beheld 
but  the  wave  of  His  hand  giving  His  last  blessing.  Then 
they  saw  Him  ascending  higher  and  higher  until  bright 
clouds  flashed  only,  as  it  were,  with  His  reflected  light. 
Presently  they  heard  the  angel's  voice — "You  men  of  Gal- 
ilee, why  stand  you  looking  up  to  heaven  ?  He  is  risen. 
He  will  come  again  !  He  will  come  again  !"  And  they 
heard  the  glorious  choirs  of  the  angels  singing:  "He 
will  come  ngain  I  He  will  come  again,  even  as  you  have 
seen  Him  rise  !"  And  then  the  voice  was  silent  until  fif- 
teen years  later,  when  Mary,  the  Mother  of  Jesus,  passed 
to  her  Son  ;  and  then  we  are  told  in  the  annals  of  the  time 
that  angelic  voices  proclaimed  the  glory  of  the  Mother  of 
God,  and  for  three  days  and  three  nights  the  apos- 
tles heard  the  angels  filling  the  air  with  their  music. 


The  Beauty  of  Divine  Worship.  483 

Then  their  voices  ceased,  nor  voice  of  angel  was  ever 
heard  on  earth  since ;  but  the  song  that  is  expressed 
in  heaven,  the  worship  that  finds  its  exj^ression  in  God's 
own  angelic  music,  is  taken  up  by  the  Church  of  God 
on  earth,  and  it  is  her  duty  and  her  privilege  to  perpetuate 
the  praise  of  ker  Divine  Lord  in  the  solemnity  of  her  holy 
song.  "I  will  put  upon  thy  lips,"  says  the  Lord,  ''my 
words,  and  they  shall  not  die  from  thy  lips,  and  the  voice 
of  praise  shall  resound  in  thee  until  the  end  of  time."  So, 
dearly  beloved,  the  Church  of  God  started  into  her  ex- 
istence and  began  with  music.  She  appealed  to  the  pagan 
nations  of  old,  not  only  by  the  voice  of  her  preachers  and 
the  testimony  of  her  martyrs,  but  also  by  that  sweet 
musical  liturgy  which  she  established  in  the  midst  of  them. 
So  that  even  in  the  three  centuries  when  the  Church  of 
God  was  persecuted — when  no  Christian  man  dared  show 
his  face,  when  they  were  only  seen  to  be  martyred — we 
read  that  in  the  dark,  deep  catacombs  of  Rome  such  strains 
of  divine  music  were  heard  that  the  Roman  pagan  citizen^ 
walking  the  streets  were  astounded  and  amazed.  It  seemed 
to  them  as  if  the  very  atmosphere  around  them  was  laden 
with  song.  It  was  the  Christian  people  singing  the  praise 
of  their  God  in  the  caverns.  It  was  Cecilia's  voice,  keep- 
ing time  with  her  harp,  which  helped  to  bear  along  and 
sustain  her  in  her  angelic  song  of  praise. 

St.  Augustine  tells  us  that  before  he  was  converted  from 
heresy  and  sin  his  heart  was  first  deeply  moved  by  the 
delightful  music  that  came  from  the  choir  of  the  grand 
cathedral  of  Milan.  Sweeter  to  the  young  pagan  than  the 
preaching  of  the  gifted  Ambrose ;  more  entrancing  than 
the  enchanting  strains  which  enlivened  the  Bacchanalian 
orgies  of  Hyppo  or  of.  Carthage  ;  sweeter  than  all  was  the 
music  of  Milan ;  for  the  sweetness  of  that  song  was  the 
sweetness  of  Jesus  Christ  and  the  glories  of  His  saints.  It 
is  a  singular  and  a  significant  fact,  dearly-beloved  breth- 
ren, that  such  is  the  peculiar  constitution  of  man's  nature, 
although  we  have  within  us  an  intellectual  soul  and  spirit 
like  to  the  angels,  whose  soul  is  thought,  yet  the  soul  of 


484  The  Bea  uty  of  Divine  Wouaiiip. 

man  can  never  be  called  into  active  existence  until  the 
senses  are  tirst  ap})ealed  to,  the  eye  or  the  ear  biinging 
sensation  to  the  soul.  The  soul  of  man  is  at  the  mei  cy  of 
the  body.  Deprive  that  body  of  tlie  senses,  strike  the  in- 
fant eye  with  blindness,  close  the  organ  of  hearing,  remove 
the  five  senses,  and  the  soul  will  indeed  s»till  live,  but  it 
will  be  incapable  of  one  emotion  of  love — ^it  will  be  without 
the  intellectual  thought  or  heart  in  the  mission  of  life. 
The  holy  St.  Augustine  described  the  e^-e  as  the  master 
sense,  sight  the  first  of  the  senses,  blindness  the  greatest 
privation  that  could  befall  man.  But,  though  the  eye  is 
the  organ  of  the  master  sense,  the  ear  is  the  most  impor- 
tant ;  for  it  is  by  the  hearing  that  faith  comes — by  hearing 
the  Word  of  God — for  it  is  through  the  hearing  it  comes 
to  the  heart.  The  sense  of  hearing  appeals  to  the  inmost 
soul.  The  eye  may  instruct  the  intellect,  but  the  ear  ap- 
peals direct  to  the  lieart.  If  the  soul  be  troubled  ;  if  the 
dark  clouds  of  despair  darken  it ;  if  apprehension  for  the 
future  overwhelm  it ;  if  pressure  of  fright  disturb  or  scare 
it,  then  the  most  soothing  power  over  it  is  the  sweet  strains 
of  celestial  song. 

Thus  when  Saul  was  afflicted,  and  the  demon  of  unquiet 
rageJl  within  his  heart,  and  now  unfounded  apprehension, 
and  now  remembrances  of  the  past,  and  now  restless  trouble 
afflicted  him,  the  only  way  the  king  could  be  calmed  in 
his  tribulation  was  to  get  the  young  musician,  David,  who 
musically  played  his  lyre,  and  the  boy  soothed  the  heart 
of  the  king,  and  his  symi)honi(^s  were  like  to  the  refreshing 
dews  of  God,  and  like  a  beam  of  light  dissipating  the 
clouds  of  despair,  and  bringing  back  to  the  hopeless, 
hope. 

Again,  when  the  chosen  people  of  God  were  fleeing  from 
the  land  of  Egypt,  and,  under  the  leadership  of  Moses,  were 
crossing  the  Red  Sea,  Pharao  followed  with  his  host,  and 
the  waters  rushed  in  upon  him  and  engulfed  him  and 
his  chariots  and  horses.  When  the  surging  waves  subsided, 
the  people  saw  the  mighty  armament  of  Egypt  flonting  in 
ruin  uporf  the  waters,  and,  seeing,  they  felt  a  mighty  gra- 


The  Beauty  of  Divine  Worship.  48^ 

titude  to  their  God  and  their  Deliverer.  How  did  they  ex- 
press it  'i  Mary,  the  sister  of  Moses,  swept  the  chords  of 
her  lyre  and  led  the  choirs  of  the  daughters  of  Israel, 
whose  voices  ntingled  with  the  sons  of  the  people,  and 
raised  a  mighty  song  of  prayer  and  praise,  so  naturally 
did  this  people. give  vent  to  their  grateful  emotions  in  song 
and  harmony.  The  next  great  incident  was  the  consecra- 
tion of  the  temple,  when  all  Israel,  from  Dan  to  Bersa- 
bee,  came  in  their  tens  of  thousands  ;  and  when  the  long 
procession  passed  over  the  tented  plain,  headed  by  the 
king,  surrounded  by  a  hundred  and  twenty  priests  blow- 
ing trumpets,  to  the  entrance  of  the  temple,  they  blew  a 
blast  of  praise,  and  sackbut,  and  timbrel,  and  organ  re- 
sounded with  the  song  of  joy,  and  thanksgiving,  and  sup- 
plication. Then  did  God  give  a  sensible  sign  of  His  pre- 
sence, for  He  was  moved  by  their  voice  ;  and  the  people 
feared,  "for  they  felt  that  their  God  was  among  them.  And 
so  when  the  Catholic  Church  rose  to  the  inission  which  was 
to  enlighten,  direct,  purify,  save,  and  strengthen  human 
nature,  and  to  raise  man  to  the  dignity  which  God  intend- 
ed— namely,  to  be  worthy  of  the  Son  of  God — it  was  quite 
right  and  natural  that  she  should  use  the  heavenly  art  of 
music  to  develop  the  purpose  of  her  mission.  Then  we 
read  that  the  liturgy  of  the  Church  was  expressed  in  mu- 
sic. And  even  as  in  the  time  of  Josue,  the  crusaders  in 
their  time  went  forth  to  battle  to  the  sound  of  the  music  of 
the  Church,  which  timed  the  tramp  of  mailed  warriors  to 
many  an  Eastern  battle-field. 

Eeading  the  records  of  that  holy  and  happy  time,  we 
are  told  how  the  chivalrous  baron  on  his  return,  putting 
away  from  him  the  mail  and  chain  armor,  wandering  into 
the  church,  knelt  down  and  listened  to  the  organ-notes 
skilfully  touched  by  Benedictine  hands  ;  how  his  heart's 
cords  were  touched  by  the  sacred  strains  of  the  organ,  now 
whispering  softly,  now  swelling  out  in  majesty,  until  his 
proud  heart,  moved  to  the  humility  of  Christian  sorrow, 
rebounded,  and  from  his  swelling  eyes  flowed  tears  of  re- 
pentance more  grateful  than  the  drops  of  blood  which  lie 


486  The  Beauty  of  Divine  Worship. 

shed  in  Palestine,  on  the  sands  of  the  East,  doing  battle 
for  the  Sepulchre  of  God.  As  time  went  on  the  Church 
created  that  prince  of  instruments,  the  organ,  for  her  own 
purpose,  and  improved  and  made  it  perfect,  until  in  our 
day  it  has  become  a  solemn,  grand,  almost  vocal  mes- 
senger of  praise  and  hope,  the  expresser  of  love — has  come 
to  be  able  to  iniluence  our  souls  and  spirits  as  if  the  voice 
of  God  itself  were  upon  its  notes.  Tlie  people  entered  into 
the  church,  tlie  young  thinking  of  pleasure  and  dissipa- 
tion ;  the  old  discontented  and  thinking  of  the  troubles 
and  the  infirmity  that  pressed  upon  them  ;  the  rich  think- 
ing of  their  ambition  and  power  ;  the  poor  borne  down  by 
distiaction  and  by  the  weight  and  burden  of  their  poverty  ; 
each  man  thinking  of  himself  in  some  way  or  other — they 
entered  tlie  church  and  knelt  down  before  the  altar,  a  mot- 
ley and  dissipated  herd.  The  sounds  of  the  orgnn  came 
forth  calling  them  away  from  their  own  selfish  desires  and 
separation.  Presently  tlie  voice  of  music  invites  them, 
steals  -them,  and  leads  them  into  the  presence  of  Jesus 
Christ.  Presently  these  grand  hosannas  and  liallelujahs 
fill  the  house  of  God,  and  the  air  trembles  with  the  wings 
of  song.  They  come  like  the  breeze  that  came  to  the  pro- 
phet on  tlie  summit  of  Mount  Carmel  as  he  knelt  down, 
for  he  knew  that  God  was  passing.  So  the  organ  brought 
them  into  the  holy  presence  of  their  God.  Proud  men 
forgot  their  pride  when  there  bowed  down,  the  old  their 
infirmity,  the  poor  their  poverty ;  every  eye  was  moisten- 
ed, every  ear  touched,  and,  every  heart  b(nng  moved,  the 
great  instniment  had  fulfilled  its  mission,  for  it  had  brought 
their  hearts  into  the  presence  of  Jesus  Christ. 

The  organ  is,  therefore,  one  of  the  most  necessary  ap- 
pendages and  most  useful  of  Cniliolic  A\'i!sliip.  It  is 
formed,  as  you  know,  of  a  multitude  of  iiipi  s.  each  one 
with  its  own  particular  note— some  of  thnn  <ir  the  high- 
est, some  of  them  the  deepest  nnd  most  solemn,  and  some 
the  lowest  ;  oach  of  them  diff* Tin u'  IVoni  tli"  otliei'.  but  all 
massed  together  and  put  under  control  to  exjuvss  one  per- 
fect note  of  praise.    Out  of  diversity  springs  union  ;  out 


The  Bea  utt  of  Divine  Worship.  .  487 

of  multiplicity  comes  harmony.  Is  it  not  so  with  the  con- 
gregation that  they  rejjresent  ?  Have  we  not  all  fearS, 
hopes,  sorrows,  joys,  each  one  distinct  from  his  neighbor^ 
so  distinct  that  the  man  by  your  side  you  might  part  with 
for  ever  and  never  miss  him  from  existence  ?  So  springs 
one  act  of  love  and  praise  from  the  whole.  No  matter 
how  diverse  or  different  the  people  may  be,  when  it  is  a 
question  of  praise,  worship,  and  faith,  they  are  all  wholly 
one — the  pulsation  moves  through  them  all.  Thus  th^ 
great  instrument  is  the  interpreter  and  the  image  at  the 
same  time  of  much  of  this.  It  is  and  will  be  a  kind  of 
angel,  inanimate  yet  vocal,  insensible  yet  powerful,  pro- 
claiming to  you  in  its  own  way  the  great  mysteries  of  faith 
and  reproducing  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ. 

The  Catholic  Church  reproduces  in  her  festivals  the  life 
of  Christ.  She  is  nothing  more  than  a  representation  of 
that  life  ;  and  at  each  scene  the  organ  takes  an  active  and 
important  accompanying  part — at  every  scene  save  one. 
Christmas  morning  will  come  with  its  frosty  air,  and  the 
altar  will  be  lighted  up  and  the  people  will  be  kneeling 
around,  when  suddenly  and  at  the  moment  we  are  not 
thinking  will  peal  out  in  glorious  tones  the  happy  invita- 
tion, "Come,  let  us  adore  him"  ;  and  at  the  sound  of  the 
voice  we  are  transported  with  the  shepherds  to  the  newly- 
born  Babe.  Easter  will  come,  and  the  tears  shed  for  the 
Crucifixion  will  have  been  dried  up,  and  in  the  ceremony 
of  the  time  the  organ  will  take  a  joyful  part.  I  have  said 
at  every  mystery  save  one  shall  the  organ  sound.  On  one 
day  in  the  year  shall  the  organ  be  silent ;  no  note  shall 
escape  from  it ;  it  shall  be  as  it  were  a  being  struck  dumb. 
On  that  day  the  Church  wears  the  black  robe  of  grief  ; 
she  stands  at  the  feet  of  the  crucified  and  overhanging 
figure  of  Jesus,  even  as  did  the  Virgin  Mother  in  the  mute- 
ness of  her  sorrow  on  Calvary.  Her  heart  is  broken  ;  her 
feelings  are  too  deep  for  utterance.  On  that  day  the  organ 
is  silent — silent  that  every  man  may  examine  his  heart,  and 
may  meditate  what  part  he  had  in  the  death  of  our  Lord. 
On  Saturday,  however,  hope  will  come  ;  and  the  organ  will 


488  The  Beauty  of  Divine  Worship. 

peal  forth  again,  and  there  is  no  death,  but  triumphant 
resurrection.  Thus  would  the  organ  interpret  to  them 
like ,  the  angel  with  a  strong  voice.  A  child  is  born  to  one 
amongst  you  ;  the  orga%  will  put  fo^tlC  ^s  yoice  of  praise. 
A  man  dies,  and  around  his  body  as  it  lies  before  the  altar 
surrounded  by  the  lights  the  organ  flings  the  incense  of  its 
suffrage.  In  all  that  appertains  to  the  ceremonies  of  the 
Church  it  shall  take  part,  and  the  great 'instrument  shall 
be  a  joy  and  a  comfort  to  you  and  to  your  children  for 
future  time.  Therefore  I  congratulate  you,  not  merely  on 
the  possession  of  a  thing  of  beauty  which  is  a  joy  for  ever, 
but  also  on  it  as  an  aid  to  the  fit  worship  of  God. 

Meantime,  I  need  not  tell  you  there  have  been  improve- 
ments made,  and  there  are  yet  many  improvements  to  be 
made,  in  the  church,  and  to  effect  them  the  bishops  and 
pastors  relied  on  that  fund  which  had  never  failed  for  fif- 
teen hundred  years — namely,  the  great  deep  faith  of  the 
Irish  heart.  No  sooner  were  the  Irish  people  converted  to 
the  Church  than  tens  of  tliousands  of  the  consecrated 
voices  awoke  the  echoes  in  the  churches  which  were  built, 
and  night  and  day  for  full  seven  hundred  years  resounded 
the  holy  song  of  prayer  and  praise,  so  that  the  emperors 
of  Germany  sent  their  ambassadors  for  choirs  of  singers 
to  Ireland,  and  in  the  monasteries  of  the  wooded  Glenda- 
lough,  and  in  Arran  thrust  out  in  the  Atlantic,  in  Mayo, 
and  in  your  own  Abbey  of  Moyne,  were  found  in  Ireland 
the  best  singers  in  the  world.  That  holy  voice  was  hushed 
in  the  clash  of  arms  during  the  Danish  invasion,  and  again 
it  was  silenced  in  after-years  by  persecution  which  all  now 
regret — perhaps  none  more  than  the  children  of  those  who 
inflicted  tlie  persecutions — but  to-day  again  a  crown  of 
glory  rests  upon  the  Cliurch.  Protestant  as^ell  as  Catho- 
lic admits  that  that  Church  is  an  ancient  and  a  venerable 
one  ;  and  though  bearing  the  scars  of  many  a  well-contested 
field,  and  often  uncrowned,  never  yet  lias  she  been  dis- 
robed. To-day,  anew,  the  Church  of  Ireland  rises,  and 
the  native  song  of  praise — the  song  of  Columb,  and  Ke- 
vin of  Glendalough,  of  Monasterboice  and  Monasterevin — 


Tee  Beauty  of  Divine  Worship.  489 

sounds  again  through  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land. 
To-day  the  Church  sings  the  praises  of  God  as  if  never 
interrupted,  and  so  she  would  continue  to  do  on  earth  as 
is  done  in  heaven,  sinking  for  ever  ^nd  ever :  "Holy,  holy, 
holy.  Lord  Clod  of  Sabaoth,  the  heavens  and  the  earth 
are  filled  with  thy  glory." 


** 


^*«? 


♦«  it 


# 


0 


'■'^^ 


m 


